


like lightning

by darcylindbergh



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Absolutely Not a How-To Guide, Angst, But They're Gonna Work For It, Established Relationship, Eventual Happy Ending, Exorcism, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Ouija Boards as Hell's Postal Service, Possession, Threats of Harm/Violence, Thriller/Horror, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:49:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 31,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27272197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darcylindbergh/pseuds/darcylindbergh
Summary: Hell doesn't send rude notes. They send ouija boards - and it's a possession waiting to happen.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley
Comments: 534
Kudos: 438
Collections: Racket’s 13 Days of Halloween





	1. Ouija

**Author's Note:**

> for Racket's 13 days of Halloween: speed run edition. Ouija, possession, ritual.
    
    
    Lightning, like love, is never ruled by logic. - Alice Hoffman, _Practical Magic_ 

*

A year.

It’s been a year, a _whole year_. It should be a drop in the bucket of a life of an immortal, but _this_ year—with all its wine drunk and meals shared, jokes told and laughter ringing out—with all its risks taken and lines crossed and cautious, gentle questions finally asked and answered, tucking them a two-story flint and stone cottage as close as they could be to the sea and as far away from fear—with all its _love_ , all its love, love, love, love, love—this year has been _the_ year.

The year Crowley finally got everything he’d ever wished for.

But Crowley is a demon, and demons don’t believe in wishes. He shouldn’t have forgotten.

Demons believe in deals.

He sits at the kitchen table, silent in this silent house, still and quiet with an angel sleeping in the big bed upstairs—a _useless_ habit, if angels were to be believed, but apparently an addicting one, especially when practiced in the close warmth and comfort of too many blankets and clinging limbs and a hot smoke-and-spice smell—

He sits, and he wonders: why would he have _ever_ thought that anything—including himself—could really, truly be _free._

*

The bed is cold when Aziraphale wakes.

That’s not altogether strange; Crowley is generally a bit more routine about sleep than Aziraphale is. He’s had rather a lot more practice, and though he’s prone to sleeping for long stretches here and there, he generally follows a humanish schedule.

What’s strange is the quiet—thick and oppressive, seeping up through the floorboards like water rising—and the scent of something rotting.

Aziraphale gets out of bed slowly, listening to the house sit still around him; the usual creaks and moans of the timbers are silent. He doesn’t bother to snap himself dressed, wary of anything that might be able to sense a miracle, and instead slips into his bathrobe and slippers before creeping downstairs.

The house is chilled and foreign in the grey morning light, and Aziraphale finds Crowley sitting at the kitchen table, slouched in the chair in his poncy silk pajamas, staring with eyes that don’t see at something laid out before him. Apprehension runs down Aziraphale’s spine, like an egg cracked onto the back of his neck and left to drip.

“What is it?” he asks.

Crowley doesn’t answer. Aziraphale isn’t even sure if he heard.

It _looks_ , Aziraphale thinks, stepping closer, like a wooden board, with burnt-in designs and a mottled black stain to it, as if it had only recently been unearthed from a long stay underground. There’s also something clutched in Crowley’s hand, Aziraphale notices—something scarlet-red and made of glass and iron.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale says again, tightening his belt again to hide his hesitation. “What is it?”

“It’s a note,” Crowley finally rasps. His voice is ragged and raw; when he looks up, his naked eyes are an acrid, sour yellow. “It’s a note from Hell.”

Aziraphale steps closer, eyeing the carvings on the board: a crescent moon, a flaming sun. An enormous horned skull with sharpened teeth dominates the middle, with a sigil carved into its centre; along the edges, a snake entwines with bells of deadly nightshade.

An alphabet, and ten numbers. _Yes. No._

_Goodbye._

“It’s a ouija board,” Aziraphale says, frowning.

Crowley nods, and puts the little glass figure on the board, right in the centre over the skull: a planchette, perching over the board like a poisonous moth. The circle of its eye is trimmed in iron lace, with ornate details as sharp and dangerous as they are beautiful, and the glass of its wings are as red as the blood already welling from Crowley’s palm where he’d been clenching it too tight.

“Oh, darling, your hand.” Aziraphale bustles to the sink to wet a tea towel, coming back to press it insistently against Crowley’s hand. He glances back at the board, but can’t stand to look at it for too long; it feels _sick_ , and _malignant,_ just sitting there, rotten as you please. “I thought you said your lot didn’t send rude notes.”

 _Your lot_ slips out unintentionally; Aziraphale cringes. _We’re on our own side now._

Crowley doesn’t correct him.

“They don’t,” he says, his hand limp and cold in Aziraphale’s as he cleans the pinprick wounds. The blood has a distinct ichor-ish tinge to it, like ink made from crushed beetles. Aziraphale doesn’t mention it. “But they do send other things.”

Aziraphale pauses. “What sort of things?”

“Commendations. Assignments.” He pauses, then looks at his hand in Aziraphale’s as if he’s only just noticed it’s being held. His voice is thin, dead, brittle. “Commands, sometimes. Drown yourself in the sea, or—” he looks at Aziraphale out of the corner of his eye. “Drown someone with you.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says, hushed and soothing. He crouches next to him, pulling him a little to catch his gaze, filling his view with himself instead of the horrible thing on the table. “Look at me. You are not under their commands.”

But Crowley shakes his head. “That’s not how it works, angel. The boards— there’s no one on the other side, see? It’s that the board itself is possessed with the message, and when someone uses the boards to get the message, they also get—the rest.”

“The possession,” Aziraphale fills in.

Crowley nods, and they both look back at the board again with fresh hatred for it. “Fell out of style with the advent of the radio,” Crowley says, cracking a terrible grin. “Now they just pop into your head and do it direct. _This_ is like—like getting a fax commanding you to off yourself. Like getting a bloody telegram.”

Aziraphale hums. “Funny—I always thought these were just silly little parlor games. Never dreamt the legends of demonic possession might be true.” He twitches his nose judgmentally. “Dreadfully crude, really.”

Crowley laughs, joyless and despondent. “That’s Hell for you,” he says. “Tacky to the last drop.”

“What happens if you don’t use the board? If you simply don’t try to retrieve the message?”

“Eventually the board will crack open,” Crowley says, hissing as Aziraphale retrieves the tea towel once more and presses it back against Crowley’s palm. “Makes itself a little vortex to Hell and drags you back down. Discorporates you along the way, too, just to add salt in the wound, and then you get to slouch around as a beast trying not to get stepped on while you explain to whatever Prince or Duke or whoever why you’re not answering your mail.”

Only it won’t be about the mail, and a simple swap won’t do this time—not for a discorporation that strips one down to true form.

“How long do we have?” Aziraphale asks softly.

Crowley looks at him, and covers Aziraphale’s hand with his own. “Midnight.”

No one says anything for a long, long time.

*

He’d thought they’d have more time. He’d thought they’d have forever.

He’d thought—after all the lives of humans they had lived, after all the dawns and epochs, rising and falling, all the empires built and dashed to dust on the pages of history—he’d thought they’d have time to make up for it.

Mornings are usually his favourite. Aziraphale is soft, in the mornings—well, he’s always soft, but mornings are a different kind of soft—a soft made of tea and scones, of the pale gold light of dawn filtering in between the leaves of apple trees, of a laugh pressed to bare skin—and it is the best time of day to love him—easy, uncomplicated, single-minded. Loving Aziraphale in the mornings is the love of _being—_ breathing, touching, holding, having, whispering plans for the day to come.

The love of being together.

He takes Aziraphale back upstairs now, leaving the ouija board and its terrors behind. His hand is still bleeding sluggishly when he reaches for the belt of Aziraphale’s robe, but Aziraphale doesn’t stop him.

“I’m not going to say goodbye to you,” Aziraphale says against his mouth, jaw set and hands tense—though gentle, so gentle, unbuttoning the buttons of Crowley’s sleep shirt as though Crowley has already discorporated, as if pushing too hard would ruin the illusion—and eyes a hard, fierce blue. “I won’t. You can’t ask me to.”

“I’m not,” Crowley says, “I’m not asking,” and he kisses Aziraphale down to the sheets, leaves a black-red streak of blood on his ribs.

He isn’t asking because the decision has already been made.

He thought they’d have more time, but now, kissing a path up Aziraphale’s chest, exploring the hills and valleys of his body, listening to the thunder of his heart and the flurry of his gasping breaths, Crowley knows it wouldn’t have mattered. He kisses Aziraphale, hard, pressing against him, bearing him down to the bed, and knows that even forever would not have been enough.

It’s familiar, this, and maybe that’s worse and maybe it’s not. Knowing where to touch, where to kiss, where to press in and where to let up. Aziraphale is, has always been, a wonder under his hands, soft thighs and the white hair that darkens to gold between them, peaked nipples and the flush that spreads even past them, blooming across him, pink and wanting. 

Crowley knows how to touch Aziraphale, how to kiss Aziraphale, how to reach and stroke and flex and seek and have and know, he’s a student of a lost art, a scholar lost in the text of Aziraphale’s own Morse code, the wrench of hips and the spread of knees and the grasp of hands, _here now, and there then,_ like following a map. 

He knows how to touch Aziraphale, but even now—after a year, a whole year, what should have been an endless year—he can hardly know what it is to be touched _by_ him. It’s what Crowley imagines it’s like for a supernova to be touched, like a black hole, greedy and explosive all at once, and every skim of Aziraphale’s hand over his ribs is a revelation, every press of Aziraphale’s mouth a benediction, and Crowley scarcely knows up from down from right from left until he's finally grounded to a shuddering halt by slipping _in._

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says—hands busy, half-frantic, mouth searching, eyes fierce and bright—“Crowley,” he says—hips rolling and legs winding and he’s all stomach and thighs, he’s all arms and fingers, the tilt of his nose and the part of his mouth, his toes pressing into the back of Crowley’s knee, his prick pressing into the planes of Crowley’s stomach—“Crowley,” he says—and if Crowley gets to take one thing, if he gets to remember _one_ thing, he wants this: Aziraphale glowing gently in their shared sheets, sweat on his brow and flush in his cheeks, clutching him close and pulling him in, and in, and _in_ , huffing a laugh when the strokes fall just right because even now, even now there’s happiness in it—in all the time they’ve spent together, even if it wasn’t enough, even if it could _never_ be enough—in all the love, thick like sunlight between them.

All the love, love, love, love, love.

“I love you,” Crowley says, moving as slowly and steadily inside Aziraphale as he dares, wanting to drag it out, wanting these last minutes to last as long as he can make them, wanting to sink down into him and stay there, burnt into his skin like a scar that never leaves. _I was here, and I loved you_. “Always have, angel. Always will. No matter what.”

Aziraphale’s eyes close, and he buries his face into Crowley’s neck, and his breath is soft and damp and hitching around his groans as he wrestles himself up to meet Crowley’s thrusts, as he arches his back and drags him in.

“Don’t you dare say goodbye to me either,” he says into Crowley’s skin, digging his fingernails in to make the point. “We’re _together,_ we’re going to be together, I _love_ you.”

Crowley was a maker, when he was in Heaven. He made things that lasted: stars and nebulas, galaxies and planets. He made things that would never fade, would never break, would never be lost. Things that would endure—long before and long beyond anyone’s ability to see or sense them—things that would live forever.

He makes love to Aziraphale now, and hopes Aziraphale will get to keep that, at least. All the love, love, love, love, love.

When they come—Aziraphale, with a cry, clenching hard around Crowley like he means never to let him go, teeth bared and thighs trembling—he’s beautiful, Crowley will remember, he’s certain of it, Aziraphale is _beautiful—_ and Crowley after him, with a hot shudder rippling through all his muscles, with his eyes slammed shut and his mouth clamped closed to stop himself from spilling out all the things he doesn’t want Aziraphale to hear— _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I thought we’d have more time, I want you to be happy—_ Crowley thinks it was worth it. To have him, for just this year. To love and be loved and to laugh and to live, even if it didn’t last. It was worth it.

_I was here, and I loved you._

*

Aziraphale holds him, after that.

 _I love you, I love you_ , he whispers into Crowley’s hair, holding him to his chest. He hopes Crowley can hear it, hopes Crowley can _feel_ it in every inch of his corporation. Hopes he can feel it all the way down to his true form. _I love you, I love you._

They’re sticky with cooling sweat where they curl together in the sheets, mussed and a little filthy and a little sore. Aziraphale has always liked it like this, afterward: tucked together and whispering to one another, drinking tall glasses of cool water, stroking fingertips over sensitive skin, loving each other in this way as well as whatever came before. It’s terribly human, he thinks. It’s terribly _real._

_I love you, I love you._

Crowley hasn’t said much since they’d come upstairs. Aziraphale had needed it as much as Crowley seemed to, had needed the affirmation, the closeness, the tenderness. _On our own side_ , Aziraphale had needed to know. _Be here with me._

Crowley had been with him since time began. He knew—he trusted, he _believed_ , he had faith—that Crowley would always be with him.

But Aziraphale can see Crowley’s resignation in every line of him; he can see him swallowing all those goodbyes like chips of ice. He pretends not to hear them in the delicate trace of Crowley’s fingers over his bare hip—in the half-lidded yellow eyes that look at him as if they’re afraid of forgetting.

Aziraphale will not say it. He will not hear it.

He will not allow that to happen.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says, “I think I have an idea.”


	2. Research

The grandfather clock in the study reads eleven o’clock in the morning. They have thirteen hours.

The knowledge of it settles hot and heavy in Aziraphale’s stomach, roiling under his skin. He can smell the rot of the oujia board even here, shut away on the other side of the cottage, seeping through the air like an oil-slick, putrid and corrupt.

He won’t let them take him. He won’t.

The door to the study opens and closes again, and Crowley folds Aziraphale’s hands around a mug of cocoa. “Here, angel. Something to keep you warm.”

Aziraphale looks down at the cocoa. There’s a dollop of whipped cream bobbing on top, an extra indulgence, and Aziraphale loves him so much it _hurts_ , aching like a bruise under his breastbone, like a limb already gone missing.

He won’t let them take him. He _won’t._

“Thank you,” he says, offering up a weak smile that feels like he’s moving someone else’s face. “Everything as it should be? In the kitchen?”

Crowley nods. He’d not allowed Aziraphale in there with him again; he couldn’t be sure, he’d said, what the presence of an angel might to do it. “Everything’s fine.”

He passes a piece of toast into Aziraphale’s free hand, and keeps another for himself. There’s apricot jam on it, from the local counter in the village. Neither of them eat.

There had been a part of Aziraphale that had not wanted to get out of bed. A part of him that had wanted to simply throw up some wards and curl Crowley up under his wings, protecting him with all the might of a principality of the Lord. He had been so desperate for Crowley’s touch, for the feel of his skin, for the movement of his body coming together with his own—for the reassurance that he was here, that he was alive, that they hadn’t taken him yet—and he had, illogically, thought that maybe if they stayed like that, no one would find them. If they stayed like that, they could just stay tucked up there forever.

“We should go down,” Crowley had whispered against his throat, stretching all along his frame. “Have some breakfast, at least.”

“Even _I’m_ not thinking of breakfast at a time like this,” Aziraphale had said, laughing, throat tight, eyes hot, but he’d agreed, and Crowley had slipped away from him.

The distance had been immediately too much. Aziraphale _would not let them take him._

They’d gotten dressed together, silently, but instead of one of his own shirts, Crowley had reached for one of Aziraphale’s white button-downs. The sight of him in it, too big for his narrow frame, was almost _too much_ , too vulnerable, too exposing. Too much of a confession: _if this is the last day, I want to spend it surrounded by you._

It had soothed something in Aziraphale, though. To see him in white; to see him clothed in an obvious representation of Aziraphale’s wings.

He’d helped Crowley roll up the sleeves to his elbows, and swallowed around his heart in his throat.

“If you’ve got a plan,” Crowley says, nudging the edge of his uneaten toast, “I think we’d better get started on it.”

It’s not a very good plan, Aziraphale thinks. He doesn’t like it. The mere thought of it has his palms gone clammy and his mouth dry. If he could think of any _other_ plan, he would in an instant, but he can’t, and he hasn’t, and if they don’t do something they’ll run out of time.

He feels like a villain, and he’s not even sure if it will work, and if it goes wrong—if it all goes wrong, if he asks Crowley to do this and then loses him _forever_ because of it—

But there’s a chance, there’s a _chance,_ and they have to try.

“I think we should let it possess you,” he says, “and then do an exorcism.”

*

Crowley rears back—away from the disgust, the terror, that Aziraphale would think, that Aziraphale would _risk—“No,”_ he says, “no, no, absolutely not.”

“Just let me explain,” Aziraphale says, setting aside the cocoa—he hasn’t taken so much as a sip, and Crowley can’t blame him because his own stomach is in knots, or possibly not even part of this world anymore, maybe it’s already been jettisoned out to the stars to try its luck elsewhere, can’t blame that either. “It would buy us _time_ , Crowley, time to figure out what it wants and how to overcome it—”

“I know what it wants,” Crowley snarls, fear bubbling in his gut like acid. “It’ll command me to discorporate us both, or worse—it’ll command me to _kill you_ , angel, and I won’t be able to stop it—”

“Yes,” Aziraphale says, as if they’re talking about the possibility of reservations at the Ritz instead of extinction at Crowley’s own hands. “But we don’t know how exactly they’ll command it.”

“How they—what’s to know? _Burn Aziraphale up in Hellfire and discorporate yourself_ isn’t exactly a tricky command to parse!”

“Isn’t it?” Aziraphale answers, reaching for Crowley’s hands, but Crowley doesn’t let him take them, can’t sit still. He jumps up to pace, and every word Aziraphale says is a horror. “If it’s as simple as all that, there’s no time limit, there’s no listed consequence for not doing it, and as long as you aren’t able to kill me, or discorporate me, or whatever they command, you won’t be able to discorporate yourself. It buys us _time,_ Crowley. Time we’re going to run out of at midnight tonight.”

Crowley almost laughs, because only Aziraphale would think to approach a Hellish command as if it were no more than a tricky little contract to cheat.

But still: “No. _No.”_

He know what it’s like to be possessed; he knows how it will feel, spreading like poison in his veins, merging with his bones. The urge to harm, to cut, to bleed Aziraphale out like an animal—the urge to tear him to shreds, the urge to see that so-loved skin rent in slashes of red, the urge to hear him cry out and go limp in Crowley’s own hands—not just the urge but the _need_ , the _frenzy_ , the _desire—_

He won’t even be horrified to want it. He’ll just want it.

He won’t even remember that he loves Aziraphale.

“I can’t,” Crowley says, hands shaking, panic rising in his chest. “I can’t.”

“It’s the only choice,” Aziraphale says, with an edge in his voice. “We have to try.”

He hates the look on Aziraphale’s face, just now—the plea, the desperation, the _please, try._ He hates that Aziraphale comes to him, puts those beautiful arms around him—around _him_ , the weapon, waiting to strike. He hates that Aziraphale let him put on one of his button-downs this morning without a fuss and he hates that Aziraphale had held him too tight in the bed as if he could protect him just by sheer force of will and he hates that the cocoa has gone undrunk.

He hates that it’s down to him—to _him_ , to what he is, to whom he belongs—that they’re in this mess.

He’d made a choice, once. One side or the other. He hadn’t understood, when he’d chosen, that power is the same everywhere, but the deal had already been made. _You can choose,_ the deal had said, _but only once._

Now his name—his true name, the one he doesn’t use, the name he can’t pronounce with this mouth—the name burnt into the forehead of the horned skull on the ouija board sitting on the kitchen table—is still on Hell’s roster.

_You can make this choice, but you make it forever._

He’s never really hated being a demon before, but he hates it now.

Aziraphale is warm against him, and Crowley wishes he’d known about _this_ choice, back then. If he could have chosen Aziraphale, all those millennia ago—even without knowing him, without _seeing_ him, without the surprise of a flaming sword given away or of oysters shared, without the light of his smile or the fussy stubbornness of his standards or the gentle hold of his hands—Crowley would have chosen him first.

“We can do this,” Aziraphale says, soothing a hand through Crowley’s hair. “I know we can.”

That’s the thing about Aziraphale, Crowley thinks. He’s always had such _faith._

Crowley sighs.

*

Possession.

It’s a dark, insidious word, and it yawns dark and insidious in Aziraphale’s belly. The very idea of it—the breach of body and soul, an invasion at the very foundations of life—turns Aziraphale’s skin to cold and his hands to trembling.

He’d done it himself, of course. Just the once: at the end of the world. He’d done it because he had to do it, and every minute inside the matter-of-fact host of Madame Tracey had felt like an inkblot against the shining warmth of his most fundamental self. He’d been dim for weeks afterward, haunted by the wretched puppetry of it: a mockery of life, of existence, of free will.

That Hell would use it against their own is unthinkable.

That Aziraphale is asking Crowley to submit to it now is _unfathomable_.

He’s not sure he’ll ever be able to forgive himself, but neither would he be able to forgive himself if they didn’t at least _try._ He will not just _let them_ take Crowley from him. He will not just give up without a fight.

The study has exploded into a flurry of books and papers over the last hour, pages upon pages ripped down from their shelves. Holy treatises, grimoires, songs and hymns and newspaper clippings, ritualistic diagrams drawn in the margins of pamphlets and letters, the odd municipal record: every secret spiritual or magical text Aziraphale has been able to get his hands on in the last few centuries—whether for humanity’s protection, or for someone else’s protection from humanity, who could say—has been spread open on every surface, stacked into piles. Here for useful tips on binding; there for useless pseudoscience; by the window casing for actual demonlogy.

The _actual demonology_ pile is rather small.

“Have you ever done this before?” Crowley says suddenly, standing by the window and ostensibly going through a text on cleansing rituals. His whole body is a twisting line of tension, foot tapping and hips shifting, flame-dark hair wild above the collar of Aziraphale’s white shirt where he’s been running his hands through it. Aziraphale wonders how long he’s been working up the courage to ask. “An exorcism?”

“Not like this,” Aziraphale answers honestly. “Though I doubt anyone has done it like this. But I have assisted with the odd Catholic rite, here and there over the years. Sometimes there was an actual demon involved,” and less the said about those instances the better, “but most of the time there wasn’t. Sometimes I was able to end it with a miracle.”

“And the other times?”

He looks up at Crowley, at the stiff line of his back. “Heaven directed me not to interfere.”

“Did any of them ever succeed without the miracle?”

Crowley turns to face him, eyes bright and lonesome, even though Aziraphale is right here; Aziraphale has to resist the urge to go over again and gather him up, to haul him close and spend the next twelve hours wrapped in a cloak of white feathers, as if that would be enough.

It wouldn’t be. He may be a principality, but he knows his limits. He can’t protect Crowley through force of arms. He can’t protect Crowley from anything.

He can only try to bring him back after Hell has had its claws in him, and hope the damage is only skin-deep.

“We won’t be without the miracle,” Aziraphale points out, voice cracking, and that’s answer enough. “Have you ever managed to throw off a possession? To get rid of it yourself?”

Crowley shakes his head. “I don’t think I ever even tried. It’s like—” he stops, sets aside the pamphlet he’s clearly only been pretending to study, runs a hand through his hair. When he forces a breath out, it shakes and rattles from his throat.

“Tell me,” Aziraphale says gently. “The more we know, darling.”

He nods, and Aziraphale can see him shoring himself up, can see him finding the side of himself that can be apathetic and bored, the part that doesn’t care. _It is what it is_ , that part says. He looks out the window again, at the garden he’s loved so dearly, now fading into the death of the year; the sunlight on his face makes his features stand out in sharp relief, angular and harsh.

“It’s like you stop existing, for a while,” he finally says. “It’s like a television being switched off. One minute you’re there, and the next you’re gone, and something else is there for you, like you’re a glove it’s just wearing for a minute while it does what it needs.” He huffs a laugh, apparently at the thought of becoming the bloodied glove, discarded, and it sends a chill through Aziraphale. “It’s not very common anymore. Easier these days to just dip into your mind long enough to give the instructions and buzz off.”

That wasn’t what it was like, Aziraphale thinks, heart sinking, to possess Madame Tracey. She had always been with him; she had always been aware. She’d been annoying and helpful and chatty and bothersome, but she’d saved him, at the last minute, from himself—pulling away Sergeant Shadwell’s monstrosity of a weapon from where he’d aimed it at a child. She’d always been there.

He knows less about what they’re up against than he’d thought.

“I’m sorry,” he manages. “Sounds awful.”

“Wasn’t all bad. You can get used to a lot of things, being a demon.”

“You should never have had to be used to any of it.”

Crowley looks back at him. “There was a lot about Heaven you should never have had to be used to, either.”

The promise is writ clear on his face, penned in the determined line of his mouth and the flash of his eyes. _I won’t let them take you again,_ he’s saying. Aziraphale stares back, unblinking, and hopes Crowley can read the same in him. _I won’t let them take you._

Finally Crowley nods, and looks down at his pamphlet again. “Do you think we can?” he asks. “You really think you’re going to be able to exorcise a small evil thing from inside a big evil thing?”

Aziraphale can’t help himself; he actually smiles, suddenly overwhelmed with exasperated fondness for an instant. “I hate to break it to you, darling,” he says, picking up a grimoire and rifling through to see if there’s an index at the end, “but you’re not evil. You’re just you.”

 _We’re on our own side_. That had been the whole point. Neither one or the other: both, and together.

Crowley must be able to hear the smile in Aziraphale’s voice, because there’s one in his now. “I’m a _little_ evil,” he protests mildly, with a bit of a hopeful upturn at the end. “Chaos personified _at least_ , don’t you think?”

“Yes, all right,” Aziraphale says, the smile settling in a little harder. Something eases in his chest, too, letting him breath a bit deeper. “You’re a big bad scary demon, I’m positively petrified. Hand me that stack of books, will you?”

There’s always been a turn of hope in Crowley—in the foundations of his unexpected daring, his risks, his ability to crack open the world and see its _possibilities—_ and Aziraphale should not forget it. It’s the thing in him that had kept him by Aziraphale’s side, over the years, coming and going and coming back again; it’s the thing in him that had blazed through him at the end of the world, burning up the chains of Heaven and delivering him, safe and whole, back into Aziraphale’s arms.

It’s a comfort, to hear it now. Aziraphale’s relying on it to bring Crowley back one more time, and Aziraphale loves him so much it hurts, it hurts, it _hurts_. It hurts to see him like this; it hurts to be with him like this. An ache like a bruise beneath his breastbone. A limb that's already missing. 

_It will be enough._

“Besides,” he adds, taking the books from Crowley, as well as the kiss Crowley presses to the corner of his mouth, “this exorcism isn’t going to involve differentiating between good or evil. I’m going to differentiate between what belongs and what doesn’t.”

“Between what belongs _where_?”

Aziraphale catches his hand before he can disappear back off to the window, drags him back down for a proper kiss. “What belongs _here_ ,” he says. He lets Crowley go, and adds, “By the way, I think we ought to call Madame Tracey in. And probably Anathema, if she’s free.”

Crowley frowns at him. “Isn’t Madame Tracey a little, well—”

“Yes,” Aziraphale cuts off shortly. “But she’s been possessed as well, if you recall, and I think we can’t turn up our nose at that kind of experience. And Anathema will keep a steady hand on things.” He picks up another book, thinking. “Perhaps her young man as well.”

“I’m telling Newt you called him that,” Crowley says immediately. “This isn’t exactly safe for humans, you do realise.”

“Yes, well,” Aziraphale says, “neither was the Apocalypse.”

*

He can feel it.

It feels—electric. Like a storm about to surge out of the sea, whipping up winds and the frothy whites of the waters. He thinks about Vesuvius, and what it was like to feel the heat building in the air, quickening the flames to a blaze as the ash came barreling down; he thinks about Helike, and what it was like to smell the salt in the air before the floodwaters washed everything away.

The ouija board sits on the kitchen table, and waits, and Crowley can feel it as if it’s watching him, as if it has eyes, and a mouth filled with teeth.

 _I won’t make this easy for you_ , he tells the knot he can feel forming at the back of his head—it’s awareness, maybe, or maybe anxiety, or maybe the board is more powerful than he thought, sending tendrils of its demands out through the ether to reach him already. _I’m not going to leave him without a fight, and I’d rather die than hurt him._

The knot doesn’t answer. There’s an impression of a laugh forming at the back of his neck, as if something is preparing to take hold of him there, to bite down and shake his determination loose.

They have a plan, though. Crowley looks at Aziraphale as he jots another note down onto the paper where he’s drawing out the ritual, his brow furrowed in concentration, and the welling up of _love_ in Crowley’s chest beats the knot back, strengthens his defenses. Aziraphale is here; Aziraphale is fighting for him.

 _We can do this_ , Aziraphale had said, and for the first time in his life, Crowley does not feel doubt.

But he can feel Hell waiting, and he’s running out of time.


	3. Reinforcements

Anathema does not want to go into the house.

They’d rushed down from Oxfordshire on Aziraphale’s call, popping in to pick up Madame Tracey—and, for better or ill, Sergeant Shadwell—on the way. Aziraphale had sounded exhausted over the line, and apologetic, and perhaps even something like _frightened_ , and Anathema had promised they’d be there within three hours. They’d made it in a little over two. 

Now that they’re here, though, staring up at an idyllic stone cottage in the West Sussex countryside in the growing dusk, a foreboding miasma of dark clouds gathering overhead, Anathema wants nothing more than to turn tail and run. 

_ There is something dangerous here _ , her gut tells her, roiling insistently. _There is something evil inside._

Then Newt takes her hand in his, large and warm, and she straightens her back, sets her shoulders, and lifts her chin. She’d faced the damn Apocalypse; she could handle a little exorcism. 

Crowley meets them at the door, slouching in the doorframe like it’s holding him up. His eyes have sunken into his skull, leaving dark bruises around the sockets; he’s sweating through the white shirt that’s practically hanging off his frame. “Hi guys,” he offers with a casual wave. “We really ought to stop meeting like this, eh—next time let’s just take it down the pub, shall we?”

If Madame Tracey senses the warnings emanating from the house, she doesn’t show it. She bustles right up to Crowley, pats his hollowing cheek, and coos. “You poor lamb. We’ll get you all fixed up straight away, shall we? Let’s start with a nice cup of tea and then Mister Aziraphale can tell us what he’s got planned.” 

Crowley doesn’t even try to pull away from Madame Tracey’s maternal hand; if Anathema didn’t know better, she might even have thought that he leaned into it. 

“He’s in the study,” Crowley says, voice low. “Look, I’m glad you all came, I need you to—.”

“He’s right here,” Aziraphale says, appearing behind Crowley with a pile of papers still in hand, all wilted curls and slumped shoulders. He gives Crowley a heartrendingly open stare, and then turns his gaze to the rest of them. “Hullo,” he says. “Come on through, I’ll start the kettle.”

“I can do it,” Crowley waves him off. “Go on, angel, show them what we’re up to.” 

There’s a moment where Aziraphale looks as though he might argue, but Madame Tracey moves from Crowley’s hollow cheek to Aziraphale’s forearm, and after a second or two of some silent communication—and Anathema wonders how much of _that_ is leftover from their brief shared time together, and how much is just Madame Tracey’s iron will taking over—Aziraphale caves. 

“We’re just trying to get our ducks in a row before we get started,” he tells them all. With an eye on Crowley, he adds, “it’s already after five o’clock—we should plan to get started with in the next hour or so.” 

“Not to worry,” Madame Tracey says, patting his arm. “We’ll get it sorted.” 

Aziraphale puts his hand over hers and, briefly, Anathema can see the angel in him: through the weary and worn façade, through the fear and the worry that’s taken root in the lines of his face and the clutch of his fingers, Aziraphale is absolutely brimming with _love_ , so bright it almost hurts, shining gold and white and streaked with red all around him like a halo. It’s a love so fierce it would make a warrior out of him, Anathema knows instantly, but it’s not a cold love, not a dutiful love—it’s the sort of bone-deep, belly-laughing, long-days-and-warm-nights-for-forever kind of love that didn’t speak of _holiness_ so much as it did of _family_. 

That’s the key, she supposes, scanning over everyone’s faces, finding the same love shining back at Aziraphale, back at Crowley. _Love_ : that’s what matters. 

The group follows Aziraphale in, passing Crowley where he’s still hanging on the doorframe with acknowledging nods—except for Shadwell, who salutes him, of all things. Anathema brings up the end, but stops when Crowley touches her elbow gently, jerking his head to indicate that she should wait behind. 

She squeezes Newt’s hand, and releases her hold; he nods without looking back at her, understanding without having to be told. The rest of the group moves into the study; she can hear Aziraphale start to explain something about a ouija board.

If Aziraphale is every inch the angel today, Crowley is every inch the demon up close: his strange eyes have gone yellow across his sclera, and something that looks like scales have erupted across the skin visible where the shirt is still undone, speckling him in a reddish-black. From the corner of her eye, she thinks she can see the snake tattoo on his jawline _squirm_. 

“You look awful,” she tells him, folding him into a hug. He’s skeletal, in her arms; he smells hot even though he’s cold to the touch—metallic, somehow reptilian. 

He grins, just as she thought he would. “Thanks,” he says, and his voice drags on the sibilant. “Listen, though. This is pretty serious.” 

“I’d guessed.” 

“Did you—” Crowley glances toward the study, as if he doesn’t want to be overhead, and then leans in close to whisper. “Did you bring any holy water with you?”

Anathema digs through her bag and comes up with a glass vial about the length of her hand, stoppered shut with a gold wax stamp in the shape of the Vatican seal. “Part of my regular exorcism kit,” she says, holding it out. “Ordered it online. Apparently it was blessed by the Pope, if that makes any difference.” 

Instead of taking it from her, as she’d expected, Crowley physically recoils, taking a step back and going even paler. “Good,” he says, strangled, laughing weakly at himself. “It’s, ah—holy water, it’s the only way to destroy a demon. I mean, _really_ destroy a demon. Not send-a-demon-back-to-Hell sort of destroy, I mean really, fully, remove-from-the-universe-in-total-extinction sort of destroy.” 

Anathema stares at him, and then at the little vial in her hand, before clutching it protectively to her chest. “I’ll get rid of it,” she promises. “Before we start.”

But Crowley shakes his head. “If it comes to it,” he begins. He runs a hand through his hair; he’s shaking. “If it’s me or him, or any of you—if you have to—”

Dread opens like a bottomless pit in Anathema’s stomach. “No.”

“If things are going badly, if you lot are losing control of the situation—”

“Absolutely not—”

“ _Listen to me_ , _”_ Crowley hisses. Really, properly hisses. He leans in close again, eyes darting to make sure Aziraphale hasn’t heard them from the study. “Do you know what destroys an angel? Hellfire. Would wipe him right off the face of the Earth. And I—” He snaps his fingers, dragging them up like he was lighting a match, and suddenly his fingertips are blazing— “can make it in the palm of my hand. Do you understand?” 

Anathema stares at the fire, which cuts off as quickly as it started, as if it had never happened at all. Crowley’s skin is completely untouched by it. When she meets his eyes again, there’s no mistaking the desperation. 

“You’re afraid,” she says, realising. “You really think you could hurt him? Any of us?”

“I think I won’t have a choice,” he says darkly. “I need you to promise me. If things are going badly, if it’s me or him, if I’m going to—if I might—I _need_ you to do this.” 

She takes a deep breath, and thinks. Envisions herself throwing holy water on that terrible fire, dousing it out along with his life. Envisions herself with the mud of what was left of him at her feet. Envisions the horror that would follow for them all, and for Aziraphale more than anyone. Envisions all the times Agnes had told her, _I need you to do this—_ if Agnes had foretold this, if Agnes had demanded this, would she do it? 

If it were Newt, begging her to save herself from him, would she do it? If it were _her_ , so desperately afraid of harming him—would she do it?

Anathema had done a lot of things, over the years, without questioning them. Things she’d never thought too hard about; things she’d never considered if she’d regret it. _I need you to do this_. 

She can’t. She won’t. Not to her friends. 

It’s not her choice. 

“I’ll keep the vial,” Anathema says finally, slipping the vial back into her bag, “ _but—_ not unless he asks for it.” 

“That’s not fair,” Crowley protests. “He would never, you know he would never.” 

“Not unless he asks,” she says again. She lays one of her hands over Crowley’s, as gentle as she can be; his skin is cool and clammy, less like a person and more like a _body_. “I’ve got your vote, and he’ll need to give his. He should get to make his own choices. He’d never forgive either of us if I did anything else.”

“Who cares about _forgiveness_ ,” Crowley mutters, “as long as he’s _alive_.” 

Anathema wraps her arms around him again, letting him slump, dejected, into her. _Who’d have thought_ , she thinks, _a demon, so full of love he can barely keep himself standing_. 

“I’ll keep it,” she says again, “but I won’t use it unless he asks. Final decision. All right?”

Crowley swallows, and he looks as if his very heart is crumpling inside his chest like so much paper. “All right.” 

*

“So,” Aziraphale says, as he finishes explaining to Madame Tracey—and Newt and Shadwell, by extension—what the plan for the evening is, “As soon as we get the circle drawn, as long as all the sigils look all right, we can get started. Crowley’s helped by drawing what he could remember—” he points to a large sheet of paper pinned to the wall— “but I just need to find a few of these last symbols.” 

“Not to worry,” Madame Tracey says. “We’ll get you all sorted, won’t we, Mister S?”

Shadwell grunts.

“Ah,” Aziraphale says delicately, putting on the expression of someone who had not quite forgiven another for burning down a certain bookshop, even though the bookshop in question had been restored. Oh, it wasn’t very angelic of him, he knew, but certainly _God_ didn’t have any compunctions about holding a grudge. “Sergeant Shadwell. I hadn’t realised you’d be participating.” 

“I’m not and I won’t,” Shadwell says gruffly. “Bunch of witchcraft here if I ever did see it.”

“Now, now, Mister S,” Madame Tracey cuts in. “None of that. And you—” she waggles her finger at Aziraphale— “Mister S has two very invaluable skills, you know. He’s a good man—well,” she makes a face, but she’s smiling affectionately too, “a very _savvy_ man, at least, to have on your side.” 

Aziraphale raises a sceptical eyebrow. “Is that so.” 

“Research,” Newt pipes up at once, picking up one of Aziraphale’s books. He looks at it belatedly, notices that it’s some two hundred years old, and sets it back down again carefully. “He used to go through twenty-some-odd newspapers a day, didn’t you, Sergeant? You were so good at finding even the littlest hint of witchcraft—I’m sure you could help with the demonology bit.” 

“Aye, I could,” Shadwell preens, before giving them all a great dark glower. “But I won’t. I’m a witchfinder, laddie. Not a demon hunter. Different army.” 

“Oh, pish posh,” Madame Tracey says. “Demons recruit witches, don’t they?” Shadwell considers this, but she’s already rolling right ahead. “Well, then, that’s settled. You’ll be helping Newt here with the research just like Mister Aziraphale said.” 

There some grumbling and grouching, but eventually Aziraphale conjures a stack of white linen bookmarks and hands them over to Shadwell. He shows them what to look for and what texts to search, discreetly disappears their cups of tea as a precautionary measure, and then turns back to Madame Tracey, who looks extremely pleased. 

“What’s the other thing he’s supposedly good at,” Aziraphale asks reluctantly. 

“Oh,” Madame Tracey says, brightening. “Just between you and me, dear, and he’d _never_ admit it, but he’s an incredible con-man. If anyone could pull a fast one over on Hell, Shadwell’s the one.” 

“You can’t _con_ Hell _,”_ Aziraphale says, and then, remembering a bit about a rubber duck and a towel, amended, “well, not without a good miracle or two at least.” 

Madame Tracey hums, clearly amused, though Aziraphale can’t see why. “Nonsense,” she says. “I’m fairly sure he’s the only person to ever have conned on all three planes, and to keep it up as long as he did! He’s just something of a blind spot, I suppose. Heaven and Hell will always underestimate him.

Aziraphale frowns. “He knew other angels?”

Madame Tracey pats his shoulder. “No, love. But don’t you worry your head about it—why don’t you come show me the place you want to chalk in the circle and we’ll start getting it set up?”

Anathema slips into the study as Aziraphale follows Madame Tracey out; she stops to kiss his cheek, and promises, solemnly, that they’re going to be all right. 

“Are you feeling better?” she says to him quietly, looking back over her shoulder to where Crowley has caught up with Tracey. “You looked like you were about to keel over, when we first got here.”

Aziraphale—is, surprisingly. The cottage is filled now with busyness and noise, with the steadiness of Madame Tracey directing where to push the sofa off to, the matter-of-factness of Newt asking questions of Shadwell in the study, Anathema’s warm hands in his own—with their _friends_. He’s still filled with nerves, muscles jumping and chest aching, but they’re with friends. 

They’re still on their own side, but they’re not alone. 

“You know,” he says, offering her what smile he can muster, “I think I am.” 

*

The cottage is bustling with activity. The rugs have been rolled back in the sitting room; the piles of books are growing ever higher in the study. Chalkboards with proposed sigils and circles have sprung up on every surface, and Aziraphale is going mad with determination to save him.

Crowley steps out the back door to escape it all, and struggles to find his breath in the cool night air. He can’t be saved, of course. Even if they win this time, it could always happen again. Even if they triumph with occult magicks and rituals, he will always be the dangerous thing that lives in this house. 

The garden is a dead and dying thing around him, and Crowley reaches his hand out to woody vines and bare bushes, understanding all at once how it must feel, at the end of every year, to shrivel and wither like this. Dropped leaves have piled up in the flowerbeds, a tidying-up project that had been slated for the weekend. The naked branches of trees scrape at the sky, black with ominous clouds; far off in the distance, there’s a roll of thunder, a storm sweeping toward them.

He should leave. Or Aziraphale should. 

He thinks about bypassing the ritual altogether, about letting himself sink down into the dark, rich earth of his sleeping garden and back into Hell on his own terms. About pledging himself once more to Hell’s edicts, if only they let Aziraphale pass free. He’d secure any temptation, oversee any sacrifice, seduce any human to sin, suffer any other punishment—if only they would leave Aziraphale be. 

A deal for a deal; a life for a life. 

_ Just go, _ he tells himself, staring at the ground. _Just sink yourself down and free him._

But then Aziraphale is calling him from the cottage, “We’re ready, Crowley!” and Crowley is helpless against the urge to turn, to wave his reassurance back. He trudges back toward the house, berating himself every step of the way to turn around, to end this all once and for all, but he doesn’t. 

He’s always been helpless where Aziraphale is concerned. He’s always been too vulnerable, too exposed, too willing, too eager, too _wanting;_ he’s always been too much in love, and he knows it’s a selfish, greedy thing in his demonic heart. 

Aziraphale deserves more, deserves better, but he lifts his chin to press a kiss to the corner of Crowley’s mouth when he reaches the back door, those riverblue eyes gentle and concerned, and Crowley is helpless to stop him. “Ready?”

Aziraphale nods, clasping Crowley’s hand tight in his own. “As we’ll ever be.” 

*

The circle is drawn on the sitting room floor in white chalk: three layers of sigils for binding, harnessing, _controlling_ all scrawled across its surface. Newt is just putting the last finishing touches on the northeast quadrant; all Crowley has to do is move the ouija board into the circle and add his own true name—a name he can barely remember, written as it is on his soul and never spoken aloud, a name that shouldn’t count, shouldn’t _matter_ , shouldn’t be able to control him—and it’ll be done. 

If they get through this, he’s going to tear every floorboard out with his bare hands. 

“You missed the tail on that one,” he points out to Newt, going around the circle and checking the sigils. He knows more of them than he’d expected; he’s not entirely sure how all of them work together, not in a circle like this, but some of them are just common sense. “You want to bind me in both forms, remember, or we’ll have a real problem.”

“Both forms?” Newt asks, adding the missed mark. 

Crowley grimaces. “The snake eyes aren’t just for show. My true form’s got fewer limbs, more scales, et cetera.” Any other time he’d probably add a wink of one slit-pupiled eye, a flicker or two of his split tongue, but tonight there’s only urgency in it, a plea that Newt understand what they’re up against. 

What horror is about to unfold. 

“Oh,” Newt says. “That’s—cool.” 

Crowley gives up on him. “Circle looks good,” he says to Anathema and Madame Tracey. Shadwell’s over in a corner, drinking an absolutely foul looking tea that Crowley most certainly didn’t make. “Anybody wants to back out, now’s the time.”

Madame Tracey levels him with a glare that would curl his hair if he allowed it. “Young man,” she says evenly, in a tone that brooks no arguments, “go get your calling card.”

The ouija board is still on the kitchen table where he’d left it that morning—where he’d found it on his way to make cocoa and toast for breakfast, to bring up to Aziraphale, cut into soldiers for dipping—where he’d left it, leading Aziraphale back upstairs to their shared bed, to the last shred of imagination that they would get to live like this forever. It’s started to decay, having been left so long; he has to shift it with both hands, lifting it up with a sucking noise. The planchette balances on top, its iron-circled eye staring up at him. 

In the sitting room, candles have been lit, the telly unplugged, a variety of Crowley’s gadgets and gidgets disabled—electricity is a fidgety thing around supernatural beings at the best of times, and there’s no reason to take any chances. Crowley knows this, but the smell of smoke makes him cough. Shadows draw long across the walls, leaving everyone with drawn faces and hollow eyes. 

Anathema comes to take the board from him, to set it in the middle of the circle so that he can draw the final sigil that will lock himself in. “Do you still have it?” he whispers to her, refusing to release it to her hold. _Do you still have the holy water?_

She meets his gaze, intense and compassionate all at once, grief already starting at the corners of her eyes, but she nods. _I still have it._

There is nothing more he can ask. He lets go.

The board is settled. Madame Tracey hands him a cup of tea, freshly brewed by miracle—he can tell because it’s milky and sweet and not over-brewed, which never happens when Aziraphale uses the kettle—and he drinks deeply. Newt hands him a piece of chalk. 

He wants to look at Aziraphale one more time. He wants to make promises, and vows, and never break them. He wants to take him into his arms, kiss him with all the breath left in his soul. He wants to take another six thousand years, and another six thousand more, and forget that Heaven and Hell ever existed.

Instead Crowley kneels, eyes closed, and writes his true name into the space left for him on the floor.

The chalk instantly melts in his hand as the sigil of his name blazes into fire, burning itself into the circle. It stays lit, flickering like an ember. 

Crowley steps into the circle. 


	4. Wait

Crowley steps into the circle.

It’s an act of trust, Aziraphale realises, an act of Crowley’s faith and hope _in him. I_ t lodges deep in his chest, sharp as a longsword and just as heavy, robbing him of his breath. Crowley doesn’t look at him, is very carefully not looking at him, and Aziraphale thinks the weight of it is going to burst him apart at all his seams, rend open his ribs to expose the need in his chest. 

He’s an angel; he doesn’t need to breathe, he doesn’t need to pump blood or blink his eyes or live in quaint cottages on the South Downs filled with knickknacks and flowers fresh from the gardens. He doesn’t need a lot of things.

He needs Crowley. He needs this to _work._

He needs to look away. 

The circle roars briefly with flames as Crowley crosses its boundaries, and then he is trapped inside.

*

Crowley steps into the circle. 

Anathema watches him carefully, as well as all the sigils on the floor, making sure none of them have smudged or gotten their wires crossed. A brief outburst of flames rises and then falls again, and she can no longer see his aura. 

The aura coming off the ouija board, at least, is foul: dark and empty, it had wrapped tendrils around her wrists when she’d taken it from Crowley, as if it could sense that she had some occult power in her and wanted to drag her in for a closer inspection. She hadn’t been able to set it down fast enough; when she had, the planchette had clattered against its rotted wood, spinning until the eye settled, magnifying the letters beneath, on _Hello_. 

She’d hidden the vial of holy water in her skirt pockets—didn’t quite trust Crowley to be in the same rooms as her bag, now that he knew she had it. She’d have dumped it on the board in an instant if she thought it would have helped. 

Crowley and Aziraphale test the boundaries of the circle, making sure it’s shut up tight. It’s a harrowing thing to witness, but she suspects the worst is yet to come. 

“Ready?” she hears Crowley say.

*

Crowley steps into the circle.

Flames shoot out of the floor; Newt instinctively steps back against the wall until it dies down again. The last sigil Crowley had drawn into the floor is still burning slightly, like the last embers of a fire. The whole room smells like rotten eggs and vanilla-scented candles. 

Crowley throws himself into the barriers a few times, making sure they’ll hold. It looks violent; Newt looks away. 

Finally, Crowley says, “Ready?” and folds himself into a complicated twist on the floor in front of the ouija board. He’d said that his true form had fewer limbs, and Newt thinks that probably seems right—it’s almost like he’s not sure what to do with all the angles they make, like he wants to pull them into himself. 

He wonders if he’s about to see a giant snake burst out of Crowley’s torso, like something out of _Alien_. 

Crowley reaches his hands out to the little red glass guitar-pick-thingamabob on the top, and closes his eyes, and begins to chant. _Aramaic_ , something in Newt’s hindbrain identifies, which seems ridiculous and yet, it’s a thought he can’t shake. 

Newt holds his breath, and waits. 

*

Mister Crowley steps into the circle.

The whole thing lights aflame, bursting with witchcraft, and Shadwell hides his face in his tea cup. Should’ve brought his Witchfinder pins. He wonders if he could find a bell around this ramshackle place instead; there’s plenty of books, after all, and plenty of candles, and he doesn’t trust this degenerate group of witches to exorcise so much as a spider out of the floorboards. 

Mister Crowley begins to speak some nefarious, ill-gotten tongue, arranging his hands on the little glass figure on the nasty piece of witchcraft on the floor. Shadwell pretends not to hear him. 

*

Crowley steps into the circle. 

Marjorie’s heart aches for him, and aches even more for Aziraphale, standing in the shadows across the other side of the room. His heart is on his sleeve tonight, poor dear, looking away as if it pains him and looking back as if not looking pains him more, and she’s never in all her years seen anything she’s wanted to comfort more. 

Odd thing, that would be, comforting an angel, but she supposes odder things have happened. 

She’s fair certain that the ritual will work. The circle’s bound Crowley up tight, no doubt—a few tests of it makes sure of that, each time Crowley hits the barriers etching onto Aziraphale’s face like a scar—and once he lets the board in, it’s just a matter of pulling it out again like a fish on a hook. 

Aziraphale doesn’t blink when the circle blazes into fire, nor does he answer when Crowley asks, “Ready?” before sitting on the floor in front of the ouija board and beginning a chant, fingertips arranged on the planchette. He’s watching Crowley so hard now that Marjorie has to wonder what kind of prayers an angel says, and whether God ever answers them. 

God’s never answered hers. She knows how to answer for herself. 

“Wait,” Marjorie says.

*

He steps into the circle.

It’s harder to do than he’d expected it to be: putting himself at the mercy of the binding. Every ounce of his being cries out against it, against the feeling of _trapped_ , against the feeling of _helplessness_. He fights to keep his human form; the snake is thrashing at all his seams, desperate to lash out. 

_ They could discorporate you, if they wanted. _

He squashes the thought hard and fast. Aziraphale is here, circling behind him somewhere outside the chalked lines: he’s safe. 

_ But are they? _

Crowley glances up, searching out Anathema. Her gaze is steady, arms folded over her chest; she meets his eyes, then flicks over to Aziraphale. He’s not sure where the holy water is, but she’s got it somewhere. _Only if he asks,_ her look says. Crowley nods. 

“Try to get out,” Aziraphale says softly, apologetically. “We ought to make sure the barriers will hold.” 

That’s not going to be a problem—he can feel the boundaries surrounding him, thick and solid, even if he can’t see them. The sensation of being buried alive rises in his throat, making him want to claw at something, to try and dig himself out. 

Instead Crowley puts a hand out, skimming along the first line of the circle, making sure they won’t spark if he touches them. They’re cold under his touch, but there’s nothing more than a static shock, like a fresh towel coming out of the dryer. 

He draws his hand back, and hit the boundary line hard. His hand stops mid-air, as if hitting against a wall. 

“Oh, good,” Aziraphale says, but Crowley shakes his head. 

“Gotta be more sure than that, angel.” He steps to one side of the circle, and throws himself bodily across it. He crashes into the line and drops, hard, to the ground, and he feels the force of it in all his bones—like a bird in flight, smashing into a windowpane. 

“ _Crowley_ ,” Aziraphale yelps. 

“I’m not going to be sitting here politely testing the boundaries once this is done,” Crowley points out, aching all over. He sits up, rubbing his hip where he’d fallen; his shoulder is going to bruise too, but Crowley suspects that won’t be the extent of his pains by the time this is over. “They’ve got to stand up to me when I’m really trying.” 

“Yes, well I think you’ve proved your point,” Aziraphale snaps, “so let’s get on with it.” 

_ He’s only scared _ , Crowley reminds himself, arranging himself in front of the ouija board. He wishes he’d taken Aziraphale’s hand one last time before he’d stepped in, wishes he’d taken a moment in the garden to kiss him, hold him, promise him he’d come back. _Aren’t we all._

The oujia board is leaving a stain on their floor. The sigil in the middle of the horned skull has started to glow faintly, burning red like an ember; it must sense that he’s close, his true name calling out to him to be his true self. Already the human body feels tight, full of pressure; already it feels like he’s disintegrating on all his edges, rotting himself from the inside out. 

The Serpent is waiting for him. 

Crowley arranges his fingers on the red-glass wings of the planchette, and begins the invocation. 

And then: Hell is there. 

He’s not sure if the rest of the group can hear it, see it, feel it, but it’s there nonetheless, creeping up his fingers to wrap around his wrists, sliding into the air like an oil spill, wrapping its way slowly around him, an animal stalking its prey. 

His heart pounds uselessly in his chest; his hands are shaking so hard that the legs of the planchette click and clatter on the surface of the board. 

He senses the rise of Hell behind him, the suggestion of two invisible hands coming down over his shoulders, a heat building inside the glass of the planchette as it prepares to move, and then—

“Wait,” Madame Tracey says.

Crowley lifts his fingers off the planchette. The building atmosphere of Hell in the room pauses, for lack of a better term—the swirling, expanding sense of it has suddenly gone stagnant. 

“What is it?” Aziraphale asks urgently. When Crowley finally manages to lift his gaze, to look, Aziraphale’s face has gone pale and drawn; he looks like he’s aged a hundred years in the last thirty seconds. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she says, “except I think—I thought we ought to give the two of you a minute.” 

Aziraphale looks stricken at the thought of it, of a minute alone with him; Crowley understands the feeling, the acknowledgement that such a moment would be already burning sour in his belly. “We’ve started,” he protests, but Anathema shakes her head. 

“I felt it start, but it’s gone again already,” she says, and she’s right, damn her: Hell is present, but it’s like taking his fingers off the planchette had hit a pause button on some occult remote. “Come on, everyone, let’s just give them a second.” 

“Right,” Newt agrees, poking at Shadwell until he sighs dramatically and shifts himself off the sofa. “A second. We’ll be back after we refill the tea cups, yes? Good.” 

And one by one, they file out, leaving Crowley alone with Aziraphale, the two of them looking at each other helplessly from the opposite sides of the boundary lines. 

_ What do you say, _ Crowley wonders, _when you can’t say anything that won’t sound like goodbye?_

*

Crowley looks so small inside the circle, now that he’s there. 

Aziraphale slides to the floor next to him, sitting carefully outside the chalked lines so as not to muss them. He feels like there’s something enormous and hard and bitter in the back of his throat, pushing at his lungs and his eyes, making it hard for him to see. 

“I’m so sorry,” he manages. 

“It’s okay,” Crowley answers, which is somehow even worse. He twists onto his hip—not the one he’d crashed into the boundaries with, which he’s obviously favouring, _damn him_ , Aziraphale can hardly breathe—and reaches out a hand, stopping at the place the boundary line must be. “It’s going to be fine, remember? That’s what you said.” 

Aziraphale puts one shaking hand up to his, but the boundary line is a solid presence between them, a pane of glass and magic that’s designed to keep them apart. He can still feel the warmth of Crowley’s hand beneath his, though. 

“I hate to see you trapped like this,” he says, choking on just _how much_ he hates it. “I hate to see you in there, and I hate that I—I _asked_ this of you, that I couldn’t—”

The last words won’t leave his throat. They’re going to cut him open, bleed him out. _I couldn’t protect you_. 

“Hey,” Crowley says, so terribly gently, and Aziraphale hates it when he does that, hates it when he’s soft like that, hates how much he needs it. Hates that he’s making Crowley do that right now, when it’s Crowley in there and him out here. “You _are,_ all right? You’re protecting me right now. This circle—that’s protecting me. This ritual, that’s protecting me. You’re going to be safe, and that makes _me_ safe, and I’m going to come back to you.”

“If Hell takes you, though—”

“Then I’ll fight my way out.”

“If there’s holy water—”

“They’ll have to catch me first.” 

“Crowley, I’m being _serious—”_

“So am I,” Crowley says, winking one yellow eye, tilting a grin up at him. “You think a little holy water could stop me from coming back to you? You think _God Herself_ could stop me from coming back to you? We’ve got tickets to the ballet next weekend, and I’m not missing that for any old jaunt to Hell.”

Aziraphale laughs wetly, despite himself. “You don’t even like the ballet.” 

“No,” Crowley admits, and that smile shifts into something unbearably soft again. “But you do.” 

The room is still, and quiet, and Aziraphale remembers when they bought this house, when they’d first come in and Crowley had fallen in love with the fireplace and the huge windows, when he’d opened the door to the downstairs bedroom and declared that it would nearly fit all of Aziraphale’s important books, when he’d gone out the back and gone silent in the face of the garden. Aziraphale remembers coming home here that first night, when it still stood empty except for cardboard boxes and terrified plants, sharing takeaway curry on the kitchen floor, backed up against the cabinets, laughing. 

He remembers the first time they’d gone to bed in a bed that was _theirs_ , theirs _together_ , not just Crowley’s bed they shared, or Aziraphale’s bed they were staying in. He remembers how it had felt different to touch Crowley, in a bed that was theirs together; how it had felt closer, somehow, how it had felt profound. Kissing Crowley down into _their_ pillows, rocking into him slowly, slowly, and then again, and again, and faster, harder, working them together until they were one and the other and both at once, and how separating after hadn’t really felt like _separating_ so much as _staying_. 

He remembers cool mornings, wrapped in a blanket on the patio, watching for robins; he remembers loud nights, the cottage shaking with music and laughter. He remembers the way Crowley smells when he cooks with garlic and onions, the soft back of his neck bent over the pan; he remembers the way Crowley laughs when the Bentley takes a hill too fast, wind whipping through their hair, and the feeling of his hand in Aziraphale’s, even as they both yell out, white-knuckled and certain— _I’m here. I will keep you safe._

“I love you,” Aziraphale says, looking at their hands together now, that empty space between them where the boundary is keeping them apart. “If you don’t come back, I’m going to come after you.” 

“I don’t doubt it, angel,” Crowley answers easily. “I love you too, all right?” 

Aziraphale takes a deep breath, and nods. “All right. Let’s get this over with, and send this board back to Hell where it belongs.” 

He lets the group back in; tea is distributed among everyone except Crowley, who has gone back to studying the ouija board. Once they’re all settled, he puts his fingers back on the planchette, and says again, “Ready?”

“Ready,” Aziraphale says.

Crowley begins.

*


	5. Exorcism

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that I've added the "graphic descriptions of violence" tag to this fic. There isn't a lot of on-screen violence, actually, but given the inherent violence of being possessed in addition to the characters' expectations of violence, it seemed fitting. As always, you can reach me on tumblr @forineffablereasons if you have questions prior to reading!

The first thing Crowley remembers about Hell—the first moment, the first searing breath of realisation—of _what had happened—_ is that it had been damp, and the damp had _hurt._

It had been the kind of damp that sank, boiling, into your bones, the kind of damp that made you think you were being steamed alive. Crowley had never been damp before, not like that—he had never known _wet_ before, and never that uncomfortable, in-between neither-here-nor-there of thick, treacley moisture that made you gasp for breath and reach through heat like suffocating cotton, searching for the breath of fresh air you’d never find.

He’d got used to it, eventually. The damp. The constant impression of _slick_ , and _mould_ , and _rot._ Even when the furnace of Hell had cooled into a sick, fetid chill—a different kind of dreadful—it had always stayed damp.

He feels it now, too: the damp. That’s how he knows Hell is _here._

Bony, invisible hands take him by the wrists, looming threateningly behind him, pressing against him as if it’s a solid fog, smelling of vinegar and coal—he hopes, desperately, that no one else can sense it, unsettling as it is—and Crowley feels it directing him, controlling him, trying to sink inside. Instinctively, Crowley tries to remember warmth, and comfort, dry linens wrapped around naked flesh and the sticky-sweet push of Aziraphale’s skin against his, but he can tell it’s a memory that won’t win.

Not this time.

The damp, invisible hands push and pull at Crowley’s, and the planchette moves across the ouija board, little by little, until it reaches the letter _D._

“D,” Anathema says out loud. Newt makes a note in his notepad. “I - S - C - ”

“ _Discorporate_ ,” Crowley supplies, and the planchette stops. The damp of Hell breathes down the back of his neck. “You don’t have to spell the whole thing out, we know what it says.”

“This isn’t _Wheel of Fortune_ ,” Madame Tracey points out calmly, which is easy for her to say; she’s only standing on the sidelines, drinking a cup of tea. “You have to let it do what it’s going to do.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Crowley mutters under his breath. He settles his fingers back on the planchette and tries to relax. “O,” he reads out. “R - P - O - R - A - T - E.”

 _Y,_ he thinks. Hopes. Prays, even. _Come on, you fucking cowards, make it a Y. You don’t have to do Heaven’s dirty work. Take me and leave him alone._

The planchette pauses, then runs a wide circle over the board. It’s toying with him. It’s toying with all of them. _Come on, make it a Y. Y for yourself. Discorporate yourself, that should be the command._

The gleam of the blood-red glass shimmers in the candlelight. Crowley pushes back against it, trying to guide it, but the damp hands on his wrists have the power now.

When the iron eye of the planchette comes to rest, the letter underneath read: _A._

“No,” Crowley says, despite himself, breath catching, hands shaking. He’d been expecting it, but it’s still too horrible to contemplate; he’d known it was coming, but it still feels like hooks catching in his ribs, pulling him apart. He looks up, eyes searching, his chest carving open under the pressure of the fog. “No, _no_ , I can’t.”

Aziraphale is there in an instant, on his knees again in front of the board with hands outstretched, like he might touch Crowley, like he might put his own hands on the board to help guide him. “You can,” he urges. “It’s all right, darling. You can.”

Crowley shakes his head, even as his fingers start to move again; Aziraphale blurs before him, a salt-water smudge of light in the shadows. He has no control over them anymore; he can’t feel the cold glass under his fingertips. “I can’t. I won’t.”

“Darling,” Aziraphale says, soft and gentle, and he sounds like he loves Crowley even now, sounds like he forgives Crowley already for this, and he shouldn’t, he shouldn’t, “you _are.”_

“Z,” Anathema says to Newt. “I. R. A. P.”

“Promise me,” Crowley begs, feeling the arms of chilled damp crawling over his shoulders, digging into the vulnerable places of his body. There’s no time to do anything else, he doesn’t care, he _doesn’t care_ as long as Aziraphale promises. “Promise me you won’t let me hurt you.”

“H. A. L.”

“Please,” Crowley says. “She’s got holy water in her bag. _Promise me_.”

“Oh, Crowley, _no_ ,” Aziraphale says, voice breaking, face crumpling, and he’s reaching again, and Madame Tracey puts a hand on his shoulder, holding him back, holding him away from Crowley, and Crowley blinks and tries to remember him, tries to memorise him, tries to brand the thought into his mind, _this is the one, this is all the love in the universe, this is the only person that matters, this is—_

“E.”

The damp is in Crowley’s throat, in his lungs, in his heart, and the rest is silence.

*

The planchette pauses.

Anathema can see the instant that the possession takes over. Crowley’s eyes close, and when they open again, red veins are reaching into the yellow, making him look more reptilian than ever. The pleading dies on his lips as he stops breathing—“Aziraphale,” Newt says, stepping forward with alarm, but Aziraphale throws a hand out and shakes his head—and the tension that’s been ratcheting up Crowley’s spine seems to hold him like a puppet, frozen.

The planchette moves again.

“A, N, D,” Madame Tracey reads. Aziraphale doesn’t move from his spot on the floor, encouraging Crowley to finish the phrase out even though it’s obvious, _it’s so obvious_ that Crowley can’t hear him. “T, H, E, N.”

“Aziraphale, he’s not breathing,” Newt says.

“He doesn’t need to breathe,” Aziraphale assures him, eyes wet, and Anathema’s heart breaks for him, for the strength he’s had to find, for the choice he’s had to make. If it were Newt in that circle—she doesn’t think she could sit there, watching him disappear like that, and the mere thought of it has her reaching for Newt’s hand, to feel his palm in hers. “It’s almost done.”

“Y, O, U, R,” Madame Tracey keeps reading.

Crowley shifts on the floor before the ouija board. He sees them—he _clearly_ sees them all, his gaze shifting from Aziraphale to Anathema and back, then to Newt and Shadwell and back, always back to Aziraphale—but he doesn’t seem to register them really. Except for Aziraphale—he keeps looking at him, looking at him like he expects something from him.

“Aziraphale, move away from there,” Anathema says, suddenly. He’s too close; he’s nearly within Crowley’s reach, if he were to suddenly jump up.

“He’s almost done,” Aziraphale protests. “I have to—I have to stay until he’s gone.”

“S,” Tracey says. “E.”

“He’s already gone,” Anathema says, “he’s gone, Aziraphale, you have to get out of the way—”

“L—”

“I can’t until it’s _done—”_

Anathema rushes forward with both hands outstretched, grabbing Aziraphale by the back of his jacket and dragging him out of Crowley’s immediate line of sight, dragging him back—Aziraphale shouts, surprised, knocked off balance—Crowley— _the creature that used to be Crowley—_ jerks his head up after them—

“F,” Madame Tracey says.

The planchette rolls over to settle on _GOODBYE,_ and the creature that used to be Crowley releases it.

Everyone holds their breath. The creature raises one hand, and snaps.

All the lights go out.

*

Aziraphale hadn’t known.

He had known but he hadn’t _known_ , hadn’t known how it would look, how it would feel, he hadn’t known that Crowley would beg, that he would ask Aziraphale to promise—he hadn’t known that he wouldn’t be able to, wouldn’t be able to make that one last vow, wouldn’t be able to soothe his mind at the last second, when it really counted—he hadn’t known what it would be like to look into those eyes, those luminous, well-loved eyes, and not see Crowley looking back—he hadn’t known what it would be like to be _seen_ in those eyes but not understood, not wanted, not loved, not loved, not loved—he hadn’t known what it would be to watch Crowley fight, and to watch Crowley lose, and to watch Crowley disappear into the creature that had hold of his corporation now.

He hadn’t known it would feel like dying.

He hadn’t known, hadn’t known what it would be to implode in on himself, to be rent open and spilled, raw and bloody, across the floor; he hadn’t known his breath would come in wet and his eyes would be blinded by salt and his hands would cramp around someone else’s as they dragged him bodily away; away from Crowley, who was no longer Crowley, who was no longer safe, who was no longer his.

He hadn’t known, he hadn’t known, he hadn’t known, he hadn’t he hadn’t he hadn’t—

*

Shadwell’s never much cared for Latin. Clunky language, in his opinion, and useless to boot—there weren’t anything could be done in Latin that couldn’t be done in plain, solid English, and English didn’t run the risk of witchcraft sneaking in at the last second neither.

But the angel had said Latin, and wrote it all out, and Shadwell said he could pronounce it all just fine—didn’t get to be a Witchfinder Sergeant without learning a bit of Latin, not even in these days, the way things are—and so here he was. Latin.

“Get him up,” Private Pulsifer is saying, somewhere in the dark, bustling about with the witch, trying to get the angel to his feet.

“Bring me one of those candles, laddie,” Shadwell says. He can pronounce the Latin just fine, but even a Witchfinder still needs to be able to see it.

In the middle of the sitting room, a light flares, illuminating the thing that had been Mister Crowley—fire, held in the palm of his hand. He’s a monstrous thing to look at, nothing like the lad used to, skin gone grey-green and eyes gone red and yellow, hollowed out in places like a skeleton.

“Did you ask,” the thing says, in a thousand voices that were not Mister Crowley’s, “for a light?”

“Time to move, time to move, time to move, time to move—” Anathema stops waiting for the angel to collect himself, heaving him to his feet like a mother with a bairn, and a minute later they’re both gone, out through the doorway and down the hall.

Great lot of help that dunderhead turned out to be.

“Mister S, sweetheart,” Marjorie says to him, in a slightly disapproving tone as if she could hear his thoughts—maybe she could, he didn’t know, witches could do all sorts of things—“If you wouldn’t mind.”

The thing in the circle keeps its palm ablaze, long enough for Shadwell to light a candle, but at the first syllable of Latin, it screeches, and the light goes out again.

“De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine,” Shadwell recites against the growing shadows. He sees Newt taking hold of Marjorie’s hand, to keep track of her as the dark grows blacker and blacker, nearly snuffling out his little candle. “Domine exaudi vocem, meam fiant aures tuae intendentes in vocem deprecationis meae—”

This time the entire circle blazes, the same way it had when Mister Crowley had first stepped over the boundaries, and Shadwell can see him raising from the ground, can see him riding up along the flames, trapped in the binding of the circle with the fire, eyes flashing, mouth opening into a gaping maw.

“ _Aziraphale!”_

*

Marjorie has seen her fair share of horror, in her days.

It happens, sometimes. It made less sense when she was young, when she saw everything through sunshine and rose-coloured glasses, but now she knows that it’s not really about sense. Some things just happen, sense or no—sometimes bad things happen, and things like _should_ or _deserve_ or _because_ don’t really come into it.

This, she thinks, is beyond sense. This, she thinks, shouldn’t happen to anybody.

Mister Crowley stands in the fire unburnt, pacing back and forth, trapped by the circle and by Shadwell’s recitations. Every so often the Latin seems to take him down to the knees, but he always rises again, speaking in a baffling assortment of languages, with more voices than he ought to have, calling out for Aziraphale, Aziraphale, Aziraphale.

“It’s not enough,” Newt says into Marjorie’s ear. “We need to take the next step.”

Marjorie nods. This is where things got a little dicey in the planning—typically, according to Mister Aziraphale, an exorcist would demand the demons name themselves. But since Crowley is _himself_ a demon, they had to be careful not to mix up his true name among all the babbled others.

“You couldn’t pronounce it if I told it to you,” Crowley had told them all, weary and worn, before they’d started. “The possessor will pronounce it differently, and translate it back in the air. You have to look for the flare on the circle instead—the word they say when my name flares in the circle, _don’t_ say that word again.”

Newt readies his notebook, little pencil in hand, and Marjorie raises her voice over Shadwell’s recitations.

“I command you, unclean spirit,” Marjorie begins, putting on her best ritualistic performance voice as she reads from the page Mister Aziraphale had written out for her. “I command you, spirits of Hell except for Mister Crowley, along with all your minions now attacking this earthly demon, by the mysteries of love and friendship and averting the Apocalypse of the Ineffable Plan, by the rising of the sun, by the setting of the moon, that you nasty little buggers will obey me to the letter, I who am a witch of humanity, sacred despite my mundanity; that you shall by some sign give me your true names, and that you shall not be emboldened to harm in any way this demon of earth, or us bystanders, or any of Mister Aziraphale’s things.”

Mister Crowley hisses and spits, words flying out so fast Newt can only scrawl letters here and there, snippets of words that might be or not be, and then, in that same voice that sounds like a hundred thousand cascading bells, “ _Aziraphale!”_

*

“I have to go to him,” Aziraphale says, wringing his hands.

“No,” Anathema tells him. “It’s not him, Aziraphale. He’s not the one there, okay? You’d just be making yourself a target.”

She’s right, he knows she’s right, but the _sound—_ the howling, the screeching, Crowley’s voice rising among the cacophony of voices bullying their way into his throat—it makes Aziraphale shake like a leaf. All of his warrior instincts, lain dormant for thousands of years, seem to be rushing at his carefully constructed barricades, eager to get at the possessed thing in the sitting room; all of his heart, so achingly active, seems to be scattering apart.

“He needs _help_ ,” he pleads anyway.

“And we are with him,” Anathema says. “But if you’re hurt, Aziraphale—if he discorporates you, this is over. We’ll lose our chance to finish the ritual. All right?”

It’s funny, Aziraphale thinks, slumping into his chair and burying his face in his hands. The thing he’d always hated most about Heaven was the _helplessness—_ the orders to stay put, the orders not to intervene. Don’t reach out, don’t save them, don’t guide them away. Let them make this horrific mistake here, so they can learn their lesson—let them die, and grieve, and ache and hurt and pray about it afterward.

He never imagined he would be helpless like this again.

“All right,” he says, swallowing hard. “But Anathema?”

He looks up at her. She looks back.

“Save him.”

*

It takes a while, but Newt thinks he’s got most of the names down. Or maybe it’s one long name, meant to be pronounced all at once? He’s not sure.

He hands the list to Madame Tracey, who studies it, all the while speaking to Crowley where he’s still bound to the circle. Sometimes pacing, sometimes thrashing, sometimes scratching at himself, like he’s trying to set something free—Crowley prowls, hunter and hunted both, trapped in one.

He looks awful.

It’s been an hour, maybe more. Newt thinks time is passing differently here, or maybe not at all; the clock on the wall seems to have stopped the moment Crowley crossed over the boundary of the chalk lines. Madame Tracey seems determined, but Anathema is clearly becoming more anxious by the moment, clearly looking now for another way to approach it.

Sergeant Shadwell comes back in with another round of tea cups, each sickly sweet and drowning in condensed milk. Newt thinks he ought to introduce the Sergeant to milkshakes, after this.

“How’s Aziraphale?” Newt asks him, taking his cup anyway out of polite habit.

Shadwell shrugs uncomfortably, taking a sip of his own tea. “Ridiculous sod doesn’t look much better than Mister Crowley here. You’d have thought taking up in the country would’ve been part of that _clean living_ he was always going on about, but it doesn’t seem to have done them much good.”

“I, uh, think being possessed probably has something to do with it,” Newt says diplomatically. “Instead of the clean living.”

Shadwell harrumphs. 

“Knew his father,” he goes on, gesturing toward Crowley, and Newt is pretty sure Shadwell _didn’t_ , actually, considering the whole _immortal fallen angel_ thing, but then, what does Newt know about it. “Poor bloke would be a-rolling in his grave, to see his son living like this.”

Newt considers. “With—the witchcraft?”

“Aye, laddie,” Shadwell says. “Mister Crowley Senior was a good man through and through, never would have had a hand in any of this sorcery. This young man here ought to settle himself down and get back to the proper business of things.” He waved his tea cup precariously toward Crowley’s writhing figure on the floor, and a thick gold band flashes on his left hand. “You don’t see Marjorie getting possessed by demons anymore, do you?”

Newt stares, then he’s on his feet again in a flash. “Sergeant,” he says, “that’s it!”

*


	6. Now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continuing the warning for graphic depictions of violence.

There is an angel sitting on the floor in the hallway.

He looks like he’s fading into the shadows of the deepening night, dusty and worn, his elbows propped on his knees, his head in his hands. He’s not crying, not now, but Anathema can see that he has been—tear tracks on his cheeks, red rims around his eyes—and his bow-tie has come loose around his neck.

It’s a funny thing, to _know_ the sort of things about the universe than most religions can only guess at. Do angels exist, do demons, does Heaven, does Hell? Is there a plan, an afterlife, a reason, a god? Anathema had never questioned those things, because they had always been _facts_ , truths played out and put together in Agnes’ prophecies with definitive values, like math problems where _solve for X_ had always meant _save the world._

_If a choir of angels leaves Heaven at the appointed hour traveling at the speed of light, and a horde of demons leaves Hell at the appointed hour traveling at the speed of sound, where should I be standing to stop the Great Beast and the End of the World?_

When Aziraphale hears them stepping out of the sitting room, he looks up, face marred with hope and despair in equal measure, and Anathema had never given a great deal of thought to faith, but there’s something surreal and profane about this: an angel, sitting in the dust, losing his.

“Is he all right?” Aziraphale asks, fear at the ready in his voice. “Is he—?”

“About the same,” Anathema soothes instantly. “Shadwell and Tracey are holding things back for now. His body looks tired, but he’s whole.”

“Hasn’t gotten any more violent,” Newt adds.

Anathema nods. “Which is a good thing. But—it’s not getting better, either.”

The hope in Aziraphale’s eyes fades, leaving nothing but the despair behind, an ache so terrible Anathema can feel it in her own chest. “I don’t dare to try a miracle until it’s desperate.” He looks at his hands again; they’ve begun to shake. “Is it—is it desperate?”

Anathema’s chest isn’t built for this kind of ache, she thinks, it isn’t made to endure it. The weight of it crushes around her ribs, and all she can think to offer is, “I think Newt has had an idea that we should try.”

“I don’t know if it’ll work,” Newt says straight away, quick to mitigate. “It’s just—a chance.”

Aziraphale takes this in, studying his hands, clasping his fingers together in order to hold them steady. A chance isn’t a guarantee; a chance isn’t even a promise of safety.

A chance is desperate.

“All right,” Aziraphale says finally. “A chance.”

Newt nods, and Anathema can see the ache as it passes to him, can see the burden of it on his shoulders. He’s offering this, this _chance_ , this desperate idea, and it if doesn’t work, well. It doesn’t bear thinking about. “Crowley talks about Hell as if it owns him, right?”

Aziraphale nods. “He’s marked. The tattoo on his face. They’ve left him alone, but as long as he bears the mark—”

“But what if there’s another mark? Something to override Hell’s?”

“I’m not sure how you intend to put a mark on him when he’s trapped, dear boy, but I doubt very much that anything we here could do would override Hell. That’s a matter of—well, we don’t have _souls_ , not the way you think of them, but our true beings. It’s something only God has a hand in, I think.”

“Is it? Crowley says he _chose_ to Fall. Couldn’t any angel? And if they can choose that, why shouldn’t they be able to make another choice?”

Aziraphale blinks, and Anathema can see the question as it lands, settles into his mind, skates around what he knows as it tries to make contact. This, of course, is the most tenuous leap of the proposal: _did_ Crowley really choose to Fall? Or does he just say that, still licking the wound of rejection even after all this time?

“There’s never been another choice,” Aziraphale finally lands on. “You Fall; you can’t climb back up. There’s no where else to go.”

But Newt is more sure now, and he reaches for Aziraphale, _smiles_ even, and Anathema’s heart swells at how gentle he can be, at how quietly he leads Aziraphale to the same conclusion he’s already reached. “You’ve already chosen. You’ve chosen this life. You’ve chosen Earth. Humanity. Us.”

“We’re not human, though.”

“But you’re not one of _them_ , either. You live by our rules, our customs.”

Aziraphale’s hands are shaking again as Newt pulls him to his feet, but he goes, and Anathema is there to help steady him on his feet. Newt speaks to him low, and soft, and gentle, explaining everything as quickly and as quietly as he can, and Anathema watches the two of them together, and prays to a god she’s never thought much about before to let this work.

Together they hold Aziraphale between them, two humans bearing the weight of an angel, and give him hope.

*

It’s no easy task getting anyone married, this day and age, but of course everything’s a bit more complicated when marriage requires two parties and one of them is currently under the thumb of some Hellish command. In order for Crowley to join the contract, _Crowley_ needs to be present.

Marjorie considers just telling the creature that Aziraphale wants to get hitched and wait to see what happens, but Shadwell is already mumbling to himself about useless witches and folks who don’t know their summonings from their banishings. He hands over his chant to Newt, who’s Latin isn’t as good but is servicable enough to keep the creature-that-used-to-be-Crowley pacing in the cage of his circle, and heads off to Aziraphale’s library again. He comes back five minutes later with the rough draft of a ritual, written in his cramped, squirrelly hand, and hands it off to Marjorie.

She reads it over, frowning. It will have to do.

“Just a few little edits then,” she says, and Anathema comes to join hands with her, raising their arms to present a defensive wall to the prowling thing in Crowley’s body.

“Depart then, Hellish transgressor,” Marjorie cries, and instantly Crowley’s body begins shouting back at her, banging Crowley’s hands against the invisible barriers of the chalk lines. “Depart, O—Bureaucratic Nightmare, full of lies and cunning, foe of virtue, persecutor of retirees! Give place, give way, to love and to life—”

The creature-who-used-to-be-Crowley begins to laugh, dark and wild. “Fools,” he spits, lips curling, voice ringing out. Marjorie has the distinct impression of blood and oil at the sound of it, as though Crowley’s mouth could open and floor the circle with an outpouring of black iron. “These words have no power here. _Hellish transgressor,_ I am not!”

It’s worse, Marjorie thinks, when this thing communicates, when it uses Crowley’s mouth to laugh without his joy and his smile without his teasing, when it uses his voice without his softness and his tenderness. A demon he has always been, yes, and a right little shit to boot, and Marjorie would never have told either Crowley or Aziraphale just how much of his mind she’d managed to read during her own possession—some things were private, and ought to remain private, and never you mind about sharing bodies—but she _knew_ Crowley.

This isn’t him. Crowley has always been a creature of scoffs and comforts in equal measure, of little gentlenesses disguised by jokes and brush-offs. Crowley has always been a creature of believing that things will work out, of believing the universe wants to survive, of believing that love—never spoken from his lips, at least not in front of Marjorie, but worn so openly on his sleeve it couldn’t be denied—will prevail.

This is Crowley the way he could have been: without humanity, without hope.

This is Crowley the way he could have been: without Aziraphale.

Anathema steps forward, scowling, and she’s got a scowl fit to send even the most churlish scampering. “You’ve overtaken his body,” she argues, and goodness, Marjorie loves the foolish girl, wishes she were half so much of a witch to stand that ground. “Hell promised to leave him alone, and you’ve broken your promises. _And_ you’re working with Heaven against Aziraphale! How is that not all a transgression?”

“No honour amongst demons, I’m afraid,” the creature-that-used-to-be-Crowley sneers. “And Crowley is still _ours_ , ours to do with what we wish, his name written in our books until the end of days—”

“Crowley is his _own_ ,” Anathema flings back. “Wouldn’t _you_ like to be your own? To—to do what you want? Instead of up here, all alone, digging around in old demons for a foothold of power?”

“I am Legion,” the thing hisses. “I am never alone.”

“One of many,” Anathema says, almost pityingly. “One of thousands. They wouldn’t even notice if you were gone, would they? They wouldn’t even notice if you never came back, except to curse you for not bringing him with you. If I threw holy water on you right now—” she reaches into a pocket on her skirts, drawing out a glass tube with a gold seal on top— “would anyone even care?”

The sight of the vial throws the entity into a panic, hurling Crowley’s body at the boundaries as it screams and wails, clawed hands scrabbling at the air. It gathers fire around itself as Anathema continues to shout at it, gathering fire around itself in a furious blaze in one moment and then darkness around itself in the next, a veil of shadows so thick the thin form of Crowley disappears inside it. Waiting. _Hiding_.

Everything falls silent.

Anathema puts the vial back into her pocket, and crosses her arms.

“I want,” she says evenly, “to speak with Crowley.”

There is a pause, during which Marjorie envies the power of Anathema’s _I-mean-it-now-and-I-won’t-ask-again_ look, and then the shadows drop from the air as heavily as if they were made of sheets of metal, crumpling to the ground as the-creature-that-used-to-be-Crowley crumples with it. The creature gasps, back arching, fingernails digging into the floorboards until they leave streaks of black-red blood behind—and then he goes limp.

When he opens his eyes, it’s Crowley that’s looking out through them, panting with effort, mouth working hard to form the words: “Get—Aziraphale.”

*

He’s through the door in an instant, reckless and ridiculous and absolutely out of his mind, back on his knees at the edge of the circle before the soot and the ash has even settled around Crowley’s body on the floor. Aziraphale can’t handle what he’s seeing, can’t process what he’s looking at, the cramped lines and streaked skin, the filthy white of his own shirt where it’s hanging off Crowley’s frame, and Aziraphale reaches without thinking, choking on his own breath when he hits the invisible barrier of the circle that keeps them apart.

“Crowley,” he’s saying, over and over, barely able to hear his own voice over the rush of blood and agony, “Crowley, Crowley, say something, say anything, darling, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry—”

“Angel,” Crowley manages, eyes opening again, yellow from side-to-side and _beautiful_ , so beautifully _him_ , so entirely his own, those eyes that Aziraphale has known better than any other eyes in all the world since time began to _tick, tick, tick_ with the patter of rain on the stone of Eden. Crowley smiles, _grins_ , somehow summoning the strength even as he lies on his side in a heap; his teeth are bloody in his mouth. “Don’t worry, angel. You can’t do the wrong thing, ‘member? You can’t.”

“I’ve done so many,” Aziraphale chokes out, shaking his head. “So many, and I _never_ should have asked this of you, I never should have—I could have just turned myself in, or gone to Hell myself to fight for you, or—” He breaks off, air trapped in his throat, strangling him.

“I dunno about that,” Crowley says, prying his own hand up from the floor. His arm is shaking with effort as he puts it up to the barrier, palm-to-palm, fingertip-to-fingertip, lining up his hand to Aziraphale’s, that horrible empty space still between them. “Let a demon make a choice, eh? I knew what it would be like, and I agreed to it. And we’re not doing too bad, you know. I’ve never had a break like this before. Demon could get used to a moment to breathe.”

“I can be persuasive,” Anathema cuts in, “but I don’t know how long it will hold, Aziraphale.”

He knows what she’s saying. _Get on with it already._

It’s not what he’d imagined, this—separated by magic, restrained by possession, with Crowley bleeding from the gums and pinned to their sitting room floor, on his own knees as his stomach tries to squirm its way out through his hands, his eyes, his mouth. He would cross the barrier right now, if the lines would let him, and gather Crowley in his arms for as long as he could. He would let himself be discorporated into dust when the time came, if only he could touch Crowley, hold him close, kiss his forehead and whisper to him all the things he’s still working out how to say— _I love you, I need you, I cannot do without you, and wouldn’t want to_.

It’s not what he’d imagined, but it will have to do.

“Darling,” Aziraphale begins, salt stinging at his eyes once more, “darling, I have to ask you something, but I need you to close your eyes for a moment, all right?”

Crowley opens his mouth to protest, but Aziraphale is pleading with every _inch_ of himself, every atom of his being, and Crowley must see it because eventually he subsides, pressing his hand harder against that hollow space between them as he lets his eyes drift shut.

Aziraphale loves him. Aziraphale needs him. Aziraphale cannot do without him, and wouldn’t want to.

“Do you remember,” he says, “do you remember when we first moved here? And everything was so new and so green, and we ate dinner on the kitchen floor and fought over such stupid things, like what colour bath towels we ought to have and what cupboard the glasses out to go in? And we were going to do that forever, do you remember, that’s what we said—that we could have white towels this time, and maybe maroon towels the next, because we’d have time to get it right, we’d have time because we were going to be here forever.”

Crowley’s mouth twitches, curls up at the corners, and this smile isn’t that bright, false thing, that _everything’s-all-right-even-though-it-isn’t_ thing. This smile is soft, and tender, and impossible, and just for Aziraphale. “I remember, angel. It was a good dream. Best one anyone’s ever had.”

“I should have asked you then,” Aziraphale goes on, _it was a good dream_ driving into his belly and pulling up rage, pulling up anger, because it wasn’t a dream, it was theirs, it _i_ s theirs, and Aziraphale loves him, needs him, _will not do without him_. “I should have asked you then, because this isn’t how I’d imagined it, and I want this for _us,_ you know, not because of Heaven or Hell, not for anything else, and there should be—you should have—you deserve flowers, Crowley.”

“Flowers? Angel, I—”

“No, hush. Keep your eyes closed and imagine it for me, Crowley. I can’t give it to you, not right now, and I will, I promise I will someday, but right now I need you to do the imagining, all right? There are flowers. Roses, I think, in the springtime, and we’d be out in the garden, watching the stars come out. And everything would smell like the sea and the garden, everything would smell like forever, and I’d—I’d be able to _touch_ you. Take your hand in mine.”

Crowley’s smile has faded, and his eyes are bright and burning when he opens them, looking up at Aziraphale with awe and wonder, and loving Crowley has always hurt, a little bit, with the fierceness of it, the rush of it, the impossibility of it, and this hurts too, here and now: that Crowley can still be surprised, that he can still be overwhelmed, that he still doesn’t always _know_ just how much Aziraphale loves him..

“Aziraphale,” he says, trying to lift himself off the floor, falling back with a sickening crunch, “what are you—”

“I should have asked out when I had the chance, out in that garden, but I suppose I always have been something of a slowpoke—”

“Angel—Aziraphale, what—”

Aziraphale loves him. Aziraphale needs him. Aziraphale _will not do without him._

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says, “will you marry me?”

*

It’s not how Aziraphale had imagined it.

Crowley struggles for his next breath, his thin chest juddering against his own shock and the weight of the thing holding him down like a snakeskin, close and suffocating. His hand, pressed against a barrier he can’t see, keeping him apart from Aziraphale, has begun to tremble.

It’s not how Aziraphale had imagined it.

There isn’t a part of Crowley that doesn’t sear and scream with pain right now—his hips and knees must be black and blue, his wrists feel as though they’ve been twisted until the skin began to burn, the tender places on his abdomen feel as if they’ve been gone over with a heavy fist. He’s been crying, can’t even stop himself now, even with everyone looking on, and he’s weak and exhausted and Aziraphale is looking at him with his own red-rimmed eyes, with his own trembling fingers, asking him, _pleading_ with him, to stay, to listen, to imagine. To marry him.

Aziraphale had imagined it.

“You’ve got the worst timing in the world,” Crowley finally manages, wheezing, half-laughing, half-crying. “And you said _I_ go too fast for you.”

Aziraphale shrugs helplessly, laughing too, that soft, low thing he does when they’re in bed together sometimes, when he’s laughing because he’s overwhelmed more than because it’s funny, because he’s so full up with emotion that there’s now where else for it to go. “Next time I’ll ask you _before_ everything goes to shit. Promise.”

Crowley’s lips are crack and tear as he smiles back. “Heaven bless it, angel. We already—”

He doesn’t get to finish his sentence.

He’s never been so _aware_ of the possession before, of it flooding through his body, stopping his voice in his throat. It feels like sinking into black waters, so frigid and icy it freezes his body where it lay, numbing him from his toes to his knees to his chest to his mouth to his—

*

He is furious.

He is angry.

He has his orders. _Discorporate Aziraphale, and then yourself._ And he will _not_ be cheated of them.

He reaches for fire, and the world descends into flame.

*

When they’re done with this dramatic lot, Shadwell thinks, dragging Mister Aziraphale to the other side of the room as Mister Crowley begins to howl inside the circle once more, he’s going to have to come out of retirement. Build up the ranks once more, bring the Witchfinder Army back to its heyday. Might even be time for a promotion, the way this is going. _Staff Sergeant Shadwell_ , that’s got a nice ring to it.

One thing’s for certain: Britain’s run rampant with all manner of witches, and something will have to be done.

“Not sure why Mister Aziraphale’d want to be getting on with him, in this state,” he mutters to Marjorie, who looks distraught as Anathema rushes forward again, her arms raised protectively with the Holy Water clutched in her hand. Only sensible one among this lot, that young woman is. “If you’d gone ‘round the twist when I asked you, I’d have taken a bloody hint.”

“Shush, Mister S,” she scolds, whacking him gently on the arm. “They’re in love, dear, oh, this is dreadful, he didn’t even get to answer properly—”

Mister Crowley’s on fire again in the circle, chanting in an unholy tongue, spitting and hissing like a cat gone feral. Not exactly husband material, if anybody asked Shadwell, but they weren’t asking and he weren’t getting any more involved that he already was.

He needs another cup of tea.

*

The heat of the Hellfire is scorching as it rises, a sea of flickering red and gold swallowing Crowley up. It’s so hot it sears across Aziraphale’s cheeks clear on the other side of the room, evaporating away the tear tracks to leave nothing but salt and a red, welted flush like a sunburn.

“You think,” the creature-that-used-to-be-Crowley says, his red-veined eyes narrow and vicious, “you can cheat Hell?”

Anathema stands between them, arms outstretched as if to block Aziraphale from view. “We think Hell is the one cheating us,” she says. “There’s a claim between these two, a higher claim than Hell’s. An overriding contract.”

“There’s no such thing,” the creature shoots back. It wears Crowley’s face with fury and with determination, and Aziraphale shrinks back into his corner, resisting the urge to bury his burned face in his hands. His skin aches, but he doesn’t dare to try a miracle to heal it, not now. “No such contract has ever been signed by this hand.” The creature raises one of Crowley’s hands, flexing it within its flames. “We’d feel it in his bones if there had.”

“Oral contracts are just as strong,” Anathema argues. “And they’ve agreed to enter into one.”

“Not with his true name. That yet belongs to us—” the creature nudges the oujia board, still sitting unburnt inside the circle, with his toes, where the sigil of Crowley’s true name still glows like an ember in the ancient wood— “and no _false purpose_ could free it from us. A _marriage_ vow, you think is strong enough? When it seeks to free rather than to bond? Don’t _insult us!_ ”

Aziraphale can’t stand it; he wrestles himself to his feet, bracing himself on the arm of the sofa, and miracles his flesh clear again. As he expected, even that tiny feat draws the creature’s eyes to him, and the creature hisses, crouching low like a predator, cocking Crowley’s head at him.

These are eyes that do not love him.

When the creature speaks his name, calling him forward, it is with a voice that has never woken him gently in the mornings, has never laughed with him over glasses of wine, has never whispered against his skin. A voice that had never swindled him into a trip to Edinburgh, or gagged over his oysters, or bore witness with him as the floodwaters rose. A voice that does not know him.

A voice that only calls to him now, and does not know how to call to all six thousand years that stand at his back.

This creature possesses Crowley’s body, Aziraphale realises, but the creature doesn’t possess _Crowley_. Instead the possession has enveloped him, pressing him so deep inside himself that he can’t see, or speak, or hear, but it isn’t _inside him_. This creature is a puppet-master, pulling on Crowley’s strings, but it only controls—it has not _become_.

Aziraphale raises his chin, and steps forward.

*

 _Your angel tries to cheat you,_ an echoing voice says, sliding into Crowley’s consciousness, the flicker of a single flame against an endless darkness. _Promises you vows, but only to free you._

Crowley doesn’t think he exists, just then, not properly—no hands, no feet, no eyes, no heart—but he answers anyway.

_He’d imagined it._

*

“Your angel tries to cheat you,” the creature is saying as Aziraphale stalks forward, the voice tripling into an echo as he addresses Crowley, trapped somewhere within. “Promises you vows, but only to free you.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says, ignoring the creature, “I promise you everything.”

The creature looks slyly up at Aziraphale, a twisted grin pulling at Crowley’s features. “He can’t hear you, Principality. Your promises mean nothing.”

Aziraphale goes on, stepping in next to Anathema, who makes room for him at the edge of the circle, watching him warily. Madame Tracey steps up to his other side, and then Newt, and then, with much grumbling and huffing and rolling of eyes, Shadwell as well—five points, holding the circle together with will and intent.

It will have to break, Aziraphale understands now. They are on one side, and Crowley on the other, and they will have to break it in order to free him.

_We’re on our own side._

“I promise you mornings,” Aziraphale goes on. “And those little eggy-in-the-basket things you like. I promise you afternoons, basking in the sunshine while I read to you from the shade. I promise you evenings, with wine and dinner and laughing at jokes so old we can’t remember who first told them. I promise you nights, tucked up together in bed, and every kiss you have ever wanted, and so many more you’ve not yet imagined.”

The-creature-that-used-to-be-Crowley paces around the circle, jeering and ridiculing at every turn, but the footsteps are growing agitated once again, the hands now constantly aflame. Crowley’s limbs twitch and drag against each other, his hips and ribs and neck contorting, as if something inside is trying to find it’s way out.

As if Crowley, buried inside his own body, is trying to surface.

“I promise you my hands,” Aziraphale says, louder now, “that they will always pull you up when you have fallen. And I promise you my arms, that they will always hold you until you no longer need to be held. I promise you my feet, that they will always follow you, and my eyes, that they will always see you for everything you are, with all your flaws and failings, and I promise my forgiveness if you think you need it and my apologies for every ridiculous argument we’ve ever had. I promise you my heart, Crowley. That it will always love you.”

“He can’t _hear you,”_ the creature shouts, but he’s shouting and shouting, as if he’s trying to drown Aziraphale out, hands clapped over Crowley’s ears. “These promises mean _nothing_.”

“These promises would mean everything,” Aziraphale returns, “but Crowley already knows them. They have already been made. We have already been married, haven’t we, darling?”

*

Crowley can hear Aziraphale now, his faraway voice like a thread shining in the dark. _I promise you, I promise you. These promises would mean everything, but Crowley knows them already._

He does know them. They are writ on his bones, on his tongue, on the raw, bloody muscle of his heart. They’ve never been spoken, but they’ve never had to be. He knows them anyway.

 _I’m coming, angel_ , he promises back, and he’s never been more sure that Aziraphale already knows that, too. _I’m coming._

*

Whatever is going on inside Crowley, on the other side of the possession, it’s almost too much to bear. Crowley’s body twists and folds in on itself, bones popping in his joints as they move in ways they aren’t supposed to, and his voice comes out garbled, less like an ancient dialect now than like an endless wailing trying to speak over itself. Aziraphale thinks he hears things inside it, sometimes— _angel,_ _I know, I’m coming_ _—Aziraphale, Aziraphale—_ but he can’t be sure.

But if Crowley is trying to claw his way forward, Aziraphale will meet him halfway.

_We already—_

“Crowley,” he calls. “Crowley, it’s time to come home now.”

The creature spits at him, and jerks Crowley’s body back to the centre of the circle, raising his arms out as far wide as they will go. “He is _ours_ ,” a thousand voices say in unison, lifting Crowley up like a fishhook has found purchase in his ribs, dragging him off the ground until his toes barely touch the floorboards. “His name is written in our ledger, and he is _ours_ to command.”

Aziraphale steps forward, and crosses the chalk line.

_We already—_

He’s careful where he steps, not yet ready to smudge the drawn ritual. Newt raises his hand tentatively, as if he means to ask a question; Anathema inhales sharply when she notices and makes to pull Aziraphale back, but he stops her with a look. _Let me._

“He isn’t.” Aziraphale steps forward again, still careful, lining his feet between lines and sigils and marks that could be dust or could be the thing holding this whole thing together. “He is mine to have and to hold, for as long as he wants me, and _I say_ there is no command in all the universe he has to follow but his own.”

“ _No marriage was entered into—”_

Another step, and another. Aziraphale is at the last line now, more in the circle than without. There’s a voice on the inferno just on the other side of the barrier, a voice that ripples underneath the many thousands howling against them. It’s calling to Aziraphale, it’s calling to _all_ of Aziraphale, to his mornings and his nights, to his hands and his arms, to his flaws and failings, to his heart. To the last six thousand years, and to the next _forever:_ _We already—_

Aziraphale knows. He _knows_ , he’s known it for centuries, for aeons, he’s known since before he could know what it meant, he’s known since before he knew what it could mean.

He may have only just asked the question, but he knows the answer.

_We already are, angel._

“We have been married,” Aziraphale says evenly, “since the end of the world. Since we raised up an Antichrist, and loved a child as our own. We have been married since I trusted him enough to put his life in his own hands, and since he trusted me enough to put it in mine.”

The fire inside the circle rages, swirling around Crowley’s body, a towering flame that would destroy Aziraphale in an instant if the barriers gave. Crowley is strung up tight in the middle, no longer writhing in an effort to emerge, but in the long, endless, echoing scream that comes from his mouth, Aziraphale hears his answering call: _Warlock, the thermos, the books, the books_.

“Of course, the books,” Aziraphale agrees, raising his voice, drawing himself up against the heat, bracing himself. “We’ve been married since he saved my books, since I washed his feet of their burns and tucked him under a blanket to pass the night. We’ve been married since he saved my neck and took me to lunch, because I was peckish and foolish and no one else was coming. We’ve been married since I let him cheat on a coin toss for Edinburgh—of course I know you cheated, darling—and since we finally figured out where we could find warmth in damp places, and it was never with Heaven or with Hell, it was only with _him_ , with the two of us _together_ _.”_

Aziraphale remembers and remembers, all the places they’ve been, moments they’ve shared, days they’ve passed. He remembers, drawing up the power of each and every year between them like a shield, like a sword, and does not dare to hope that he’s really seeing what he’s seeing: the entity, lifting _out_ of Crowley’s body to crawl over his skin like a shadow, slick and twisting.

 _The Agreement_ , the faraway call sounds now, before the shadow flows up and up, gathering and folding itself over Crowley’s mouth. His feet kick ineffectively at the ground; one of them hits the ouija board, knocking the planchette askew. _The Agreement_.

“He’s going to discorporate, Aziraphale!” someone cries from outside the circle.

“He’s not!” Aziraphale shouts back. “He’s not, because he’s not theirs to take!”

Aziraphale looses his wings, huge and brilliantly white, spreading them up and around the edges of the binding circle’s invisible walls, and he can feel the roaring heat of the Hellfire, can smell the first ends of his feathers begin to burn. He’s so close to the barrier now that the wall of flames is nearly on top of him, and all it would take now is for one scuff of his shoe to bring it all come crashing down on him.

“We will take him in fire,” the entity threatens, but it’s fully outside Crowley now, the visible sliver of Crowley’s eyes gone back to their usual yellow, a shining crescent that calls to Aziraphale like starlight. “You were a demand, but not of Hell’s, and we are used to disappointing Heaven.”

_Aziraphale, Aziraphale, Aziraphale—!_

“You can’t take him more than two inches across this room,” Aziraphale shouts, “you can’t take him anywhere, and you know it, because we’re married, we’ve been married since we shared food in Rome, since we shared doubts in Golgotha, when he was so willing to say what I could not. We’ve been married since we learned grief together, and comfort, and you will release him from this shadow _or so help me—_ ”

Aziraphale’s wings raise against the threat; the gold ring on his pinky finger burns white-hot, the lion emblem turning coal-black as he loses his grip on his corporation, as his true form begins to stutter out of him with the impression of eyes, of wings, of endlessness, of eternity.

Out of the corner of his perception, he can see Shadwell, sitting down on a chair with a _thump_ as he takes in Aziraphale’s form, Madame Tracey with a hand over her mouth, Newt with his hand tucked into Anathema’s and Anathema with her eyes fixed on Aziraphale himself, unflinching and steady, and she raises a hand—“You’re close, Aziraphale!”—

She raises her hand, and there is a vial of holy water in it.

“No,” Aziraphale gasps, and “ _NO_ ,” the creature screams, and _yes yes yes yes Yes YES—_

“Do it!” she calls, but she’s not looking at Aziraphale anymore, she’s looking at _Crowley_ , she’s looking into the fire and flame, she’s looking at Crowley’s hands where they’re digging into the entity, not clawing it away but _holding it in place_ , she’s looking at Crowley’s feet, kicking wildly, nicking the ouija board again, Crowley’s true name still smouldering away in the centre of it, “do it _now!”_

And Aziraphale suddenly, abruptly, understands.

Crowley’s foot drags back. 

Aziraphale grits his teeth, dropping what is left of his corporal form to the ground—“We have been married—” voices call from every corner of the room, from every corner of the house, Aziraphale’s voice, Crowley’s voice, the both of them together, speaking at once, calling to each other, calling over each other—“since he did the right thing, and I did the wrong one—” _I love you, I need you, I will not do without you—_ “and you will _not_ take him from me!”

Crowley’s foot kicks forward.

The ouija board skitters across the circle as the toe of Crowley’s boot makes contact, sliding fast and hard toward the barrier, toward Aziraphale—he pulls a hand out of the ether, ready, waiting, watching as it comes closer, and closer, and then—

—Anathema puts her foot forward, and draws a neat, thin line through the chalk, and the board skates through, licked with flames, and then—

“ _Crowley, move!”_

—Aziraphale slams his hand, with the white-hot ring already blazing, the lion rampant on a flaming field, down into the centre of the board, into the centre of Crowley’s true name, down and down and down and then—

The board _shatters_ , obliterated into dust. 

There’s a tremendous _phoomp,_ and Aziraphale is knocked back, a heavy weight slamming into him, slamming him back into his corporation, back into the floor, and a voice is whispering in his ear, real and close and frantic, and perfect, so perfect, _angel, angel, angel, you ridiculous idiot, I love you, I love you._

Something in the air sizzles, like water hitting a hot pan, and the room goes black.


	7. Together

Marjorie takes a deep breath, and flicks the kettle on.

Cups: fresh ones. She finds them in the cupboard to the left of the sink, lines them up one after the other on the worktop, a haphazard collection of mugs that read things like _World’s #1 Grandma_ and _the 89th Annual National Honey Show._ Tea sachets: from a box in another cupboard, sugar: in the jar on the counter, milk: in the carton in the fridge, along with a half-can of condensed milk. She finds a spoon in the drawer and a packet of biscuits on the shelves and a tray to carry it all on, and her hands have almost stopped shaking by the time she has everything together.

 _Steady on, now_ , she reminds herself, breathing out hard.

There’s a hush over the cottage now, as if nobody is really quite sure whether to trust the silence. Every creak and crack of the house’s old bones resettling, every trickle of water finding its way through charred floorboards below, every rush of breath from exhausted lungs sets them all on high alert, like dogs pricking their ears.

_Is that—? Could it—? Is it really over?_

Marjorie Potts is not a fanciful woman. The only fantasies she indulges are other people’s. If Mister Crowley tells her that it’s over, she’ll have to be content to believe it’s over.

She takes the tray of tea and biscuits down the library, where everyone is sat around with ashen faces and uncertain hands. Mister Aziraphale is still passed out, poor lamb, though he now has a rather extravagant chaise lounge to be passed out on, rather than the floor; Newt and Anathema are sat with their backs against the bookshelves, hanging onto one another; Shadwell is by the windows, muttering to himself about witches and plans and new recruits. She hands him his tea with a kiss to his cheek, suddenly grateful that he never changes. So many things have.

Mister Crowley himself is tucked into a pile of limbs on the floor along another bookshelf, more elbows and yellow eyes than anything else. He looks like he’s been wrung through a laundry press a time or two, too thin and long; his eyes are a bright acrid yellow, bigger than they ought to be in his drawn face, wide with fear as he watches Aziraphale, and waits for him to wake up.

“Are you all right?” Marjorie asks, handing him a mug. Extra sugar, but no milk—she’d like to get him the extra calories, but she’s heard milk is bad for snakes, and one just doesn’t know these days.

“Mm. Bit—smoked, I think. But I’m all here.”

“Good, then.” She hesitates, but dares to ask anyway: “And will _he_ be all right?”

Crowley makes a noise like a wounded kitten deep in his throat. “Dunno.”

“What did he _do?”_

It had all been a kerfuffle, there at the end. Crowley on his toes with his arms outstretched, hooked on some invisible hand; Aziraphale with _wings_ , dozens of wings and hundreds of furious eyes glittering like little spring beetles, sweeping through the air like a hurricane. Rather a lot of shouting.

Marjorie had _thought_ she’d seen Aziraphale holding a light in one hand, a light so bright and white it could’ve been the sun itself, and she’d _thought_ she’d seen him slam that light into the ouija board, just like she’d _thought_ she’d seen Crowley shedding the shadow on him like a skin and throw himself at Aziraphale just as Anathema threw water into the circle, just like she’s _thought_ she’d seen the shadow shrivel and screech and melt into the floor, but Marjorie Potts is not a fanciful woman, and all that seems unlikely.

“He, erm, smote my name from the books of Hell, I think.” Crowley says. “Pulled down his true form to force recognition of our—a—” here he stumbles, face paling all over again before finally deciding on— “a contract, and laid claim to it. _Me_. Look.”

He tilts his head, and right next to his ear where a snake usually curled, now sat a lion, rampant.

None of that particularly makes sense to Marjorie, but she realises that _her_ understanding isn’t what Crowley needs right now. Instead she only nods, pulls an antique chair over to sit next to him, and rests a hand on Crowley’s shoulder.

He exhales shakily, grabs her hand with one of his, and Marjorie might not understand everything, but she understands this: sometimes you just need something to hang onto.

Together, they wait.

*

Newt is a warm weight against Anathema’s side, grounding her as they wait. He’s always grounded her, ever since they met—bringing her back from a realm of prophecy and magic into something a little more like reality. _Don’t you ever just do things for yourself? See how they turn out?_

It had been terrifying, to take the first steps into the world on her own, without Agnes by her side, without knowing that the world would step aside to show her the way. But she can always look for Newt—warm, and kind of a dork, and used to traveling through a world that didn’t so much step aside for him as it did sit in his path and throw a fit—and she never has to walk alone.

Looking at Crowley now, she wonders what it’s like to walk with someone for six thousand years, and to suddenly find yourself at stopped at what might be the end of the road.

“Shouldn’t we call a doctor or something?” Newt murmurs against her arm. “He’s been out almost an hour. M’pretty sure you’re supposed to go to hospital if you’re out even for a few seconds.”

They both look over to Aziraphale, still and silent on the chaise lounge Crowley had conjured out of nowhere. He hasn’t moved since—since—well, since he destroyed an occult artifact and Anathema freed Crowley from a binding circle and poured holy water onto a spirit from Hell, but he’s still got his usual golden glow of an aura. It’s faint, shimmering like a trembling hand, but it’s there.

“He’s not human,” Anathema reminds him. “I don’t think it works the way it works for us.”

“You think he’s got funny insides? Like, too many kidneys, or maybe it’s just all empty in there, like a Kinder egg. Maybe he’s got too many hearts or something.”

She smiles, and then keeps smiling with the realisation that that was Newt’s goal all along. “He’ll be fine, I’m sure of it.”

Newt doesn’t answer, and quick on the heels of the first realisation comes the second: Newt’s not sure of it at all. He’s bracing for impact; he’s lessening the blow. He’s giving her a moment’s reprieve with silly conversation because he thinks there’s still something worse coming.

He thinks they’re going to lose Aziraphale.

Anathema settles herself more heavily against Newt, the shelves of the bookcase digging awkwardly into their backs, and finds his hand with hers. The thing about walking together, she thinks, is that when one of them falls, the other can always help them back up.

“He’s going to be fine,” she says again, softer this time, but infinitely more certain. She squeezes Newt’s hand until he looks at her. “Hey. He’s strong. He’s going to be fine.”

Newt squeezes back, and after offering up a tremulous smile, leans in to kiss the corner of her mouth. “We are too, you know.”

“Of course I know,” she tells him.

Together, they believe.

*

It’s difficult to sit, like this. To sit and wait, and do nothing at all.

Newt’s tired down to his bones, more tired than he’s ever been in his life, probably, and it’s still difficult to sit. He’s not always very good with his hands, but he likes to make use of them. He likes to build and break down and sort out all the fiddly little pieces, to make things better. To fix things—his mum’s old broken computer, his dad’s old ham radio with the busted dials, Dick Turpin. Anathema, too, a little bit, though that’s less about _fixing_ than it is showing her what life can be like when some four-hundred-year-old witch isn’t running the show.

He just likes to make things _work._

There’s a mess in the other room that needs clearing up, and Newt itches to go do it: to sweep up the ash, scrub away the chalk, roll out the rug again. To tidy up Shadwell’s dirty tea-cups, and to shelve Aziraphale’s books, and to put something to rights again.

But Crowley had said no, once Newt and Sergeant Shadwell had dragged him into the hall with Aziraphale, spilling them both out on the floorboards. “Nobody’s going back in there until I’m sure,” he’d said, breathing hard. His skeleton had looked too close to the surface, and he’d held onto Aziraphale like he meant to fuse himself to him, and Newt hadn’t dared argue. “Just get everybody out and close it up for now.”

“Until Aziraphale’s sure,” Anathema had corrected, white as a ghost but no-nonsense as always. “Sorry, Crowley. There’s too much holy water in there.”

“I could mop it,” Newt offered, but Crowley had stuck firm, crawling up onto unsteady feet and asking Newt to give him a hand moving Aziraphale down the hall.

Aziraphale’s still passed out, or knocked unconscious, or whatever it is that happens to angels when they become overwhelmed. He hadn’t really thought an angel _could_ be overwhelmed, actually, and it’s a bit of an unpleasant shock to see him like this—Aziraphale, who is usually so full of movement and smiles and gentle hands—laid out on the sofa, face slack and unmoving.

Newt wonders if he should get a glass of water to splash on his face. Isn’t that how they do it in the movies?

Although, if this sort of thing is going to become like a _regular thing_ , Newt should probably know something a little more about it all than what he could remember from films.

At the very least, he should probably watch better films.

Anathema’s hand tightens around his for a moment, and Newt looks over to her—still pale, but looking a little better for Madame Tracey’s tea. She would know where to start, if he wanted to know more. She’d probably be over the moon to teach him.

It would be nice to know, Newt thinks. How to help care for someone—an angel, a demon. Other sorts of persons, if there were other sorts of persons—were there other sorts of persons? And if he’d known more about exorcisms to begin with, he could’ve been more helpful there, too. He’s all right with the research, but it’s like Velcro, isn’t it? If he had a better foundation, the research would have something more to _stick to_.

He and Anathema could probably help a lot of people, actually, with this sort of thing. The right sort of people, who need help with the real sorts of things. Maybe he could invest in some of the gadgets he’s seen on telly, too—EVPs and EMFs, thermal cams and ghost boxes. Were ghosts real? He’s pretty sure ghosts are real.

“You’re antsy,” Anathema whispers to him, her head tipping to rest on his shoulder.

“A bit. Are ghosts real, do you suppose?”

“Sure ghosts are real,” she answers, with a yawn. “Why do you want to know about ghosts?”

“Think maybe I might want to know more about all of this,” Newt says. “Become like, a proper helper with this sort of thing.”

Anathema lifts her head up to stare at him. “You mean, like a witch.”

“No,” Newt says, but also, “well, yes. I mean, sort of, but not really. I just—want to fix things. And it seems like I’d be better at fixing things if I understood them, you know? And if I understood them, I could help lots of people fix things.”

“Ghost things? You want to fix ghost things.”

“Ghosts, or angels or demons, or whatever that thing was that had Crowley. And if there are other—thing-type things. I just mean, if there are other people who need help like Crowley needed help, we should help them. Shouldn’t we?”

Anathema looks at him for a long moment, studying him as if looking to find something. Reading his aura, probably. He lets her read it all, and finally she slumps back against him, tips her head back against his shoulder. “Yeah,” she says. “I think that would be good for us to do.”

It really would, Newt thinks. Nobody should have to go it alone because of who they are, or where they came from, or what they’re up against. Not when there are people out there—people like him and Anathema, like Sergeant Shadwell and Madame Tracey, like Crowley and Aziraphale—who can help. They just need to know how to help _properly_.

Together, they’ll learn.

*

Witchfinder Staff Sergeant Shadwell looks out the window over the garden, where the cloud cover is just beginning to clear enough to let the moonlight dapple over the leaves. It’ll be dawn soon, and a new day, and the beginning of the end of all witches in England.

 _Well_ , he thinks, looking back at Marjorie, at Anathema Device, at Private Pulsifer. _Maybe not all._

Perhaps it’s time for a new age in the Witchfinder Army, actually. These here witches haven’t done anyone any harm, except to fill some empty heads with silly notions. But that foul creature what had had Mister Crowley in its grasps more than half the night—now there was something to defend against!

Hell recruits witches, didn’t it now? And Heaven too, if Staff Sergeant Shadwell is to believe his own two eyes, and he expects he’s got the clearest eyes in the whole of England. Maybe it’s time the Witchfinder Army focuses on a bigger enemy.

For that, he’s going to need a bigger army.

He might as well start by recruiting this useless lot; one can never turn a nose up at any recruit in these trying times, particularly against the forces of darkness.

Together, they’ll defend.

*

Aziraphale’s first thought is that he has a headache.

His second thought is how _strange_ it is to have a first thought—to have a gap between the last thought, the one that felt a weight landing in his arms and pushing him away, the one that heard _angel, angel, I love you, I love you_ , and this one.

His third thought is that it’s not really a headache at all; it’s more of an all-over ache. A throbbing, sour pain, and a bone-deep weariness like he’s never felt before, weighing on him from all over and all the way down, deep into the wing-joints of his true form. It feels like his many eyes have been open underwater, stinging with the salt of the sea; it feels like his corporation has been all stretched out, like the neck of an old jumper.

There’s something else there, too. Something thrumming with anxiety, pulsating with fear. It’s not his own, he doesn’t think—it’s more like a thread tied around his finger, a telephone line ringing with someone else’s call that he’s hearing from _inside_.

 _Crowley_ , he thinks, and he shifts all that ache, all that weariness aside. It will all be fine if he can only reach him, he knows it will. _Crowley._

Together, they’ll heal.

*

“Crowley,” a weak, parched voice says into the quiet. “Crowley.”

Crowley looks up.


	8. Catching Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Princip and Mintly for helping me go back and forth with this one!

Crowley’s always been good at waiting.

He’s not sure where he picked up the habit, if he’s honest, and it’s a terrible one for a demon. He ought to be rushing forward, speeding along, whining and complaining and forcing things through. He ought to be hurrying, and in some things he does—driving the Bentley, for instance, or skipping the queue at the village bakery—but where Aziraphale is concerned, it’s always been easy to slow down. To wait.

He waits now, watching Aziraphale’s bruise-dark eyes flit with some unknown dream, and wonders what he’ll think when he wakes up.

There had been a moment, there at the end of it all. In the midst of the fire and frenzy, with a black shadow hooked through Crowley’s forms and into his very soul, there had been a moment when he had suddenly been— _alone_.

It had been a strange and disorienting feeling, thrusting him into an awareness of his own boundaries against the rest of the world, but it had only lasted that one moment. Just an instant, a blink-and-you’ll-miss it, before something else took hold. Something that anchored itself in him like a thread passing through the eye of a needle; something that now sits heavy in his chest, curled against the darkest, emptiest spaces of Crowley’s existence.

Crowley knows what it is. It’s warm, and gold, and soft in all its strength, and he’s known that feeling since time began.

_Aziraphale._

It had been a diamond-bright and blinding thing, that first instant after the ouija board had shattered under Aziraphale’s might. Aziraphale had come _rushing_ in, and Crowley had gone flying out, and they’d been a bundle on the floor, all white wings and scaled hands, until Newt and Shadwell had dragged them out into the hall while Anathema shouted and Tracey directed, and then Aziraphale had sagged and the light had dimmed and Crowley had panicked—but it hadn’t gone out.

It’s still thrumming now, the low, pulsing glow of Aziraphale, shuttered inside himself. Crowley can’t reach him, wherever he’s gone. Can’t find him at the other end of the tie between them.

He can only clutch onto that dim light like a lifeline, and hope Aziraphale comes back to him.

Crowley feels the impression of the possession on him still, like a film of soap that hadn’t quite been washed away; his corporation feels foreign and unmoored, a little uncertain of its boundaries. His limbs might be too long, yet, his eyes too round. In some dimension that both is this one and isn’t, the serpent coils, agitated and anxious.

He knows how to wait for Aziraphale.

He knows Aziraphale will always catch up.

Takes time, sometimes. Aziraphale is a complicated, comfortable thing, and he likes to change in complicated, comfortable ways—a step closer, a plate of oysters, an arrangement. A daring rescue and a softer remembering. Handing trust over in a thermos, and finding faith in a bathtub in Hell. He likes to go his own quiet pace, testing each step before he puts his foot down, making sure the ice beneath will hold.

Crowley worries that this connection—this thread, this tie between them—will be too much. That Aziraphale will feel it and shy away from it; that Aziraphale will look at him with those honest, river-blue eyes and say, even after all this time, _you go too fast for me, Crowley_.

 _This is our home,_ he reminds himself. The walls of the library, filled with books; the kitchen down the hall, with its scarred wooden table they share toast over most days. The sitting room, waiting to be returned from dust and ash into a squishy sofa and cosy blankets. The bedroom upstairs, where they cling together and move as one, where they make themselves vulnerable and find themselves loved.

 _This is our family._ Shadwell, who’s a madman but a determined one; Anathema, who doesn’t believe in impossibility, and Newt, who doesn’t believe in fussing over it either way; Tracey, who’s cupping Crowley’s hands around a mug of hot tea and slipping her hand onto his shoulder like she means to weigh him down.

 _This is our life._ This place, these people, this time, and the soft, golden thread that ties it all together—the two of them, and all the love, love, love, love, love.

He’s waited a long time for this home, this family, this life, this love, Crowley has, and he’s been good at the waiting. He can wait some more, if he has to; he can wait as long as he needs for Aziraphale to catch up.

They’re here. They’re alive. They’re together.

They have forever to figure it out.

_This is our side._

*

 _Crowley_.

The line between them feels hot and metallic, smooth and raw like silk. The anxiety threaded through it is an old, skittering thing, too used to itself, and Aziraphale feels it echoing inside his own chest as he tries to pulse back with comfort. _It’s all right. It’s going to be all right, Crowley_.

The anxiety begins to lift a little, soothing into something that feels more like determination, but Aziraphale isn’t sure at all if Crowley can hear him, buried down so deep inside himself as he is, or if there’s something else happening. He needs to be _out there—_ he needs to be out there _right now_.

Aziraphale assesses himself, looking for the boundaries of his corporation, trying to remember how it all fits into skin and muscle and bone. He’s too close to the wings and eyes of his true form to make it all work properly. Fingers, palms, wrists, arms. Lungs, throat, vocal cords, tongue. _Crowley, Crowley._

“Crowley.” Yes, that’s it, try again once more. He sounds awful to his own ears, dry and weak. “Crowley.”

It’s enough, though; Aziraphale can feel that it’s enough. A fresh surge of fear and relief rushes into his chest. He hears a scramble of reaction spreading through the room—a soft gasp, heavy footsteps, movement of cloth.

“He’s alive,” Shadwell reports loudly, from somewhere far too close. He sounds almost irritated at the revelation, as though he thinks Aziraphale’s only being dramatic.

“ _Mister S_ ,” Tracey says, scandalised, but Aziraphale doesn’t hear the rest of it, because a hot, damp hand folds around his, then, tremblingly gentle where he can tell they’d rather be hard.

“Aziraphale, are you with us? Can you hear me?”

Of course Aziraphale can hear him. Aziraphale can always hear him. A smile spread across his corporation’s face, as natural to him now as the whirlwind of wings surrounding his soul. He hopes Crowley can feel it too, down the thread that ties them together. “Crowley.”

“Yeah, m’here, angel,” Crowley answers, with that snuffled sort of laugh that means he’s trying not to cry. “Terrible timing for a nap, you know. Rude as anything.”

“Just awful,” Aziraphale agrees, and then he finally remembers how to open just the usual two eyes, instead of all of them.

A series of concerned faces float over him, blurring together until they finally settle into themselves: Newt, Anathema, Tracy. Crowley, closest, with a frown and a smudge of soot across his face, though most of the damage has been miracled away. Somewhere, Shadwell is muttering on about witches and the Thundergun of Witchfinder Colonel Darlrymple. That’s probably a thing that ought not to exist anymore, now that Aziraphale thinks of it, but— _focus._

He does, raising a hand to Crowley’s face. Crowley leans in, those huge yellow eyes watching him unblinkingly. “My dear, did it—are you—is it—?”

It feels silly to ask; of course it must have worked, of course Crowley must be free. Of course it must be over.

He still wants to hear it though. He still _needs_ to hear it.

Crowley must be able to feel it, that urgency pooling in Aziraphale’s chest—the urgency to touch, to hold, to kiss, to reaffirm, to know—because he’s hushing Aziraphale and squeezing his hands and kissing him, just at the corner of his mouth. “Yeah, it’s fine, it’s all fine. It worked. Got you a proper exorcised demon, now, I’m all yours.”

“And we’re—?”

The word sits heavy on his tongue; all of sudden he feels too presumptuous to speak it out loud. Aziraphale’s corporation flushes, pooling embarrassment and hesitancy hot in his cheeks. What if Crowley had only gone along with it for the exorcism? What if none if it _meant anything?_

But Crowley has always been the braver of the two of them, and he summons the courage first to finish the thought: “Married, yeah.”

He glances up at Aziraphale with cautious eyes as he says it, though, and his voice is thick with the same uncertainty that Aziraphale feels, almost contrite, almost—guilty.

And suddenly it seems all so silly, this careful tip-toeing around, these side-glances at what they want, doubting one another. Holding themselves at arms-length, when they’ve built this home and this family and this life, when they’ve shared themselves down to their cores, when they’ve chosen each other again and again and again.

 _Married_ , Aziraphale thinks, letting the thought sink into him like snowflakes melting on his tongue. Just a human tradition, in the end, but strong enough to break them free. _Married_.

Of course it means something. It’s always meant something. From the sheltering wing on the gates of Eden to the takeaway dinner shared on their kitchen floor, from the long centuries moving around one another to the longer nights moving with one another, from the very beginning and until forever, it’s always meant something.

Aziraphale takes Crowley’s face in his two hands, and curls himself up to lean their foreheads together. “I love you,” he says, carefully, as clearly as he can through the bubbling emotion, the tug of a grin he has no control over, the surge of happiness racing down his veins. “I need you. I can’t do without you.”

Relief washes through Crowley’s frame; Aziraphale can feel it in the slump of his shoulders, the crooked tilt of his mouth. The tie between them, still delicate and new, shivers with something like an exhale, a letting go, an opening up, and between them _it shines_.

“You’ll never have to,” Crowley tells him, and that’s all there is to say, really. The line between them glows with shadow and light, storm and silence, and Aziraphale kisses him, and kisses him, and kisses him.

Crowley smiles against Aziraphale’s mouth, and kisses him back.

*

Ah. Right. Well.

“I think we’ll just step out into the hall, actually,” Marjorie says. She doesn’t think they’ve heard her.

A bit of relief never hurt anyone, she thinks, ushering young Newt and Anathema through the door, Shadwell already having made a rather hasty escape, but that really is terribly enthusiastic for an audience. Still, it does warm the heart—

“Tracey?” Anathema says, from the kitchen doorway at the other end of the hall. “Are you coming?”

“Of course, dear.” Marjorie takes one last look over her shoulder, just to make sure they’ll be all right, and closes the door behind her.

*

There’s the issue of water.

He’ll start with a broom, Newt thinks, sweeping through the dust and ash and the first layer of chalk. Sweep it all up, dump it out in Crowley’s compost pile behind the shed. Then a mop, to get the remainder up, and then probably a bucket of soapy water and a scrub brush to get the rest of the chalk out of the floorboards.

But there’s the issue of the holy water, and Newt isn’t sure how to ensure there won’t be any of that left behind. How to assure Crowley, or Aziraphale for that matter, that there wasn’t anything blessed hiding in the nooks and crannies of the wide, scarred planks of their sitting room floor.

“Crowley told us to stay out of there,” Anathema says, coming to stand with Newt at the doorway to the sitting room, looking in alongside him.

“I’m not in there,” Newt points out. “I’m very firmly in the hallway.”

“You’re thinking about going in there. Just _wait_ , hon, I’m sure they won’t be that much longer.”

“I’m sure there’s nothing untoward about washing dirty mugs out.” He nudges at her, drawing her gaze to the mugs of tea left on the coffee table here, the sideboard there. “They’re nowhere near the circle.”

“You don’t know that. There was a whole lot of gross old agent-of-Hell floating about when we left. Things might have—I don’t know. Drifted.”

Newt scrunches his nose. “It doesn’t _look_ like there’s anything dangerous in there. Nothing—moving about, or, or alive, or anything. I’m sure Crowley just meant to avoid the actual circle.”

“I’m sure he did _not,”_ Crowley says, right into Newt’s ear.

And there Crowley is: leaning dramatically against the wall, hip cocked, grin crooked. His sunglasses are back in place, which is strangely comforting—he looks more like himself with them on, at least to Newt—although he still looks pale and a little charred around the edges. His hair has been ever so carefully arranged to cover the curve of his jaw where a lion has taken the place of the snake.

Newt wonders if Aziraphale’s seen it yet. He bets not.

Speaking of—“Where’s Aziraphale?”

Crowley turns and glances back over his shoulder, just as Aziraphale steps out of the library, and if Crowley’s pale and gaunt just now, Aziraphale still makes him light up like the sun. 

“I’m here,” Aziraphale says, and then he frowns deeply at Crowley. “You shouldn’t be, though.”

“Wouldn’t dream of going in,” Crowley tells him, pushing off the wall and heading for the kitchen. “Not until you’ve cleared it.”

All the same, Aziraphale waits until Crowley has disappeared from view; Newt can’t see them, but he has the distinct impression of Aziraphale’s wings, bright and huge and mantled protectively, only shaking themselves back into their usual place of nowhere in particular once Crowley’s gone.

“Now then. What are we dealing with, here?”

Newt and Anathema shuffle aside to let Aziraphale peer into the sitting room, taking in the mess of ash and water and splinters of rotted wood, washed with the earliest grey light of dawn starting to suggest itself through the wide windows. It must be a sad sight, Newt thinks, to see a place you’ve lived and loved so well stained with the reminders of a night like this one.

“I thought maybe we could start with a broom,” he offers, feeling spectacularly incompetent. He makes a mental note to add it to the list of things for himself and Anathema to research—it’s no good being able to _do_ an exorcism if they don’t know how to clean up after it.

But Aziraphale doesn’t really seem all that phased. In fact, he looks over the whole room with an air of quiet fury, and for a split second, Newt sees what he saw just a few hours ago—a thousand eyes, a thousand wings, light brighter than the sun itself and the face of a lion, wreathed in righteousness and holy flame—and then Aziraphale snaps his fingers.

“There,” he says, cracking his neck. “That ought to do it. For tonight, at least.”

Newt looks back, blinking to clear his eyes again, and has to look again. The water, the ash, the chalk, the shards of the ouija board, the little blood-red planchette—it’s all disappeared.

“Oh,” Newt says, staring. He wonders if Aziraphale could teach him _that_ trick. “Cool.”

*

Mister Aziraphale tries to insist on them staying for a rest—“Really, it’s no trouble to put a few guest rooms on,” whatever that means—but while Staff Sergeant Shadwell of the New Witchfinder Army may not have the luxury of turning away a few allies, he’s not the sort to lay his head in a house of witchcraft and sorcery, and he’s not shy neither about saying so.

“What Mister S means,” Marjorie says, laughing and giving Mister Aziraphale a kiss on his cheek, “is that we’d just rather have a sleep in our own beds, is all.”

Shadwell grumbles, but can’t be arsed to correct her, and instead goes off to find their coats, which he finds in the library, where Mister Crowley has apparently been tidying up the stacks of books. He looks up when Shadwell comes in, nodding and gesturing at the pile of jackets on one of the chairs. “Taking off then?”

Shadwell shuffles himself into his own coat, gathering up the rest, and gives Mister Crowley a salute he probably doesn’t deserve but which Shadwell cannot, in good conscience, forgo. “Your Honor.”

“Sergeant Shadwell.”

“It’s Staff Sergeant Shadwell now, laddie.”

Mister Crowley makes an exaggerated _oh!_ with his mouth, the villain, and sketches a little bow between them. “’Course. ‘Course it is.”

“Obviously,” Shadwell says, and then, rather without his own permission, he adds, “Your father would be proud of you, he would.”

Mister Crowley turns, his exaggerated _oh_ now somehow much more genuine and baffled. “My _what—_?”

“Damn proud,” Shadwell repeats. Never been the brightest lad, this one. “He never cared that much about witches or warlocks, really. Mistake on his part. But damn proud.”

And then, before he can mortify himself and his Witchfinding sensibilities any further, Shadwell turns on his heel and leaves. He’d rather go out and wait by the car than have anything more to say about that.

*

Anathema is exhausted.

The sky is just turning pink along the horizon by the time they get themselves together enough to head home. Aziraphale had fussed, of course, but Anathema had given him a smile and hug, as big and hard as she could, given that he was an immortal, ethereal being and she was barely a twenty-one year old American, but he’d hugged her back gratefully anyway.

It’s for the best anyway, she thinks, because when Crowley herds them all to the door, he’s still taking care to hide the new shape of his tattoo at every turn—hidden by his hair, glancing out this door or that window, careful yet not to give Aziraphale a clear view of it. What they really need, she knows, is just some time alone.

“Newt’ll be fine,” Crowley tells her at the door, as if she had voiced some worry. “Aziraphale’s blessed him. Won’t sleep now until his head hits his own pillow.”

Together they look out at Dick Turpin. Newt is helping Madame Tracey into the back seat, bouncing enthusiastically on his heels. He looks somehow even more like a puppy than he usually does; she smiles when he looks up, heart full, and gestures that she’ll be there in a minute.

She turns to Crowley, studying him. “Are you? Fine?”

“Yeah, ‘course.” She raises an eyebrow, tilts her head to see the lion tattoo peeking out from under his hair. He huffs, rolls his eyes. “It’s not—it’s just. One thing at a time, all right? But we’re—good. We’re good. It’ll be fine.”

She gazes up at him hard, but Crowley does not look away. His aura is gold and red, different than it used to be—as if Aziraphale’s got his fingerprints on him—and it does still glow with that faint sense of anxiety, but more than that, there’s contentedness. There’s hope.

“All right,” Anathema allows, blinking the vision of it away. She reaches up, tucked Crowley’s hair behind his ear. The lion, rampant: bold and beautiful, as bright and protective as Aziraphale’s wings had been, as Aziraphale’s eyes had been. She pulls him into a hug the same as she’d pulled in Aziraphale, big and hard and as fierce as she can be. “It suits you,” she whispers to him. “Tell him.”

“Shut up,” Crowley grumbles into her ear, but he hugs her back, just as tight.

*

“Will they be all right, do you think?” Newt asks, one hand on the stick as if he’s not sure he ought to pull away yet.

Anathema looks up at the cottage, painted with the early gold of the dawn. The morning promises to be clear and bright. “Yeah,” she says. “I really do.”


	9. Freedom

The house is quiet.

It’s a strange sort of quiet, a hush that rushes in to fill the hollows left behind by the chaos and chatter of the night—a sudden silence of absence. Crowley closes the door behind Anathema and all the rest, and breathes that quiet in, all clean early light and cool air, washing away the sound of fury and the scent of oil and rot, the lingering taste of _goodbye_ on Crowley’s tongue.

He doesn’t need it anymore.

This is a beginning, not an end.

Aziraphale is somewhere in the cottage, waiting. The line between them pulses with patience and that certain sturdiness of heart that Crowley knows so well, and he knows that Aziraphale is giving him space, giving him time. If he needs a moment to reconfigure himself around the tie that exists so solidly between them, Aziraphale will wait.

Aziraphale is good at waiting, Crowley knows now. Good at waiting, at denying himself what he truly wants, and better than Crowley has ever been at hiding it.

He finds Aziraphale in the kitchen, washing out the mugs and humming a lullaby almost as old as humanity itself. Crowley stops in the doorway to watch him for a minute, taking off his sunglasses to better memorise the lines of him, so painfully beautiful like this: an angel with his hands in soapy water, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, cleaning out the cups their friends had used throughout the night. Their family.

It sits in Crowley’s chest, curling around the tie between them and settling in to stay: all the love, love, love, love, love.

Aziraphale finishes the mug he’s working on, and though he must know that Crowley is watching, he doesn’t turn around. He simply forages through the soap bubbles for the next one, stuffing the flannel down inside, waiting. He’ll wait forever, if that’s how long it takes until Crowley is ready.

Crowley’s ready.

He slinks forward, knowing Aziraphale knows he’s coming. Slips his arms around Aziraphale’s waist and breathes him in, soot and ash, dish soap and tea. Presses his forehead to the back of Aziraphale’s neck and stands with him, feeling the tie between them shorten with the distance and rejoice at the closure of it. Crowley doesn’t have the words for the relief, for the _peace_ that rolls through him, but it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t need them.

Aziraphale feels it too.

There’s an exhale, from one or both of them, Crowley isn’t sure, and then Aziraphale is turning in his arms, his hands already dry by the time they come up to cup Crowley’s face, tracing the edge of his cheekbones and the hollows of his eyes as though checking that the lines of him are still the same.

When Aziraphale leans in, brushing his mouth to the corner of Crowley’s mouth, it feels like taking a leap, like stepping over the threshold into something new—and it also feels the same as it always has, warm and comforting, like opening a door and finding _home._

They kiss like they have always kissed because they are as they have always been.

 _We_ _’re on our own side._

*

Aziraphale can’t stop kissing him.

Crowley tastes like soot, like tea, like the sour note of exhaustion settling into his bones—like himself, and not at all like himself. Aziraphale tries to kiss him gently, cradling his face with both hands, pushing down against the sense of urgency that has been fighting for attention since he came to. Crowley needs him to be steady, right now; Crowley needs him to be strong. To help him upstairs and put him to bed, to let him sleep all day and wake up with a cup of tea already waiting for him.

It’s just that Aziraphale needs Crowley, too.

Aziraphale can’t stop kissing him.

He feels delicate under Aziraphale’s hands, like his skeleton is still shifting into place, unsure of what shape he wants to be—this way or that. Aziraphale tries to kiss him carefully, holding onto him with his palms flat and broad against Crowley’s body—his jaw, his neck, the curve of his waist when Crowley’s knees start to sag, the dip of his lower back, precious and almost unbearably intimate—keeping him together, in one shape, in one piece. Reassuring him that this body is real, that it’s his, that it’s solid.

It’s just that Aziraphale needs the reassurance, too.

Aziraphale can’t stop kissing him.

Crowley clings a little under Aziraphale’s hands, like he trusts Aziraphale to keep him standing, to move him where he needs to go. Aziraphale takes a step forward and guides Crowley into a step back, one after the other; this is a familiar dance, and Aziraphale keeps the beat with the movement of his mouth, his jaw, his shoulders, his hips. Through the kitchen, down the hall. Up the stairs, stopping on the landing to clutch at each other, to get a better grip on each other, like they both fear the other will float out of reach.

It wasn’t so long ago that Crowley _was_ out of reach: trapped, bound, helpless on the other side of the circle drawn in Aziraphale’s own hands.

But it wasn’t so long ago either, Aziraphale reminds himself, trying to slow the kiss, to gentle his hands, that Crowley was here, doing this same thing, making this same journey. Reaching for Aziraphale as Aziraphale reached back. It was just yesterday, and the dawn then had been dark and gloomy and filled with despair, but now— _now_ , here, Crowley is warm and brilliant and familiar and alive, pulsing down the line that ties them together, drawing Aziraphale closer, moving against him just a little faster.

There’s something pink and red and wanting, thrumming dwn the line between them. A plea Crowley hasn’t made yet. A question he hasn’t yet asked.

 _I_ _’m here_ , Aziraphale answers anyway, slotting Crowley’s bottom lip between his own two, kissing him hard with the memory of the first kiss, the last kiss, all the kisses of the last year, given so freely, and all the kisses of the last six thousand, held back but imagined anyway, labeled neatly with Crowley’s name, with the curve of his neck, the stretch of his wrist. _I_ _’m with you_.

Aziraphale can’t stop kissing him.

There are so many moments, so many memories, of wanting to kiss Crowley, of wanting to breathe into him, of wanting to confess something in lips and fingertips and the soft, cautious brush of a tongue—giving words from Aziraphale’s mouth into his, confessing without a voice. These are kisses more than six thousand years in the making, fueled by starry nights in gardens long since rotted away, in places that could no longer be named, in the chalk lines of a circle just downstairs. Aziraphale kisses him and guides him up the stairs, closes the bedroom door behind him, letting Crowley pull at him, letting Crowley delve into him, letting the sound of Crowley’s heart beat _here-here-here-safe-safe-safe_ through both their chests.

The thing is, Aziraphale thinks, rucking up the waist of his own shirt on Crowley’s thin frame, finding the cool skin of his sides, his ribs, his hips, this is exactly the same, even though it’s different, even though it’s new: even though it’s a kiss on the other side of a line they didn’t realise they were waiting to cross, it’s still _their kiss_.

They are as they have always been because this is how they’ve _chosen_ to be.

Oysters shared across a table in Rome. Books collected in the ruins of a bombed-out church. The sun in Crowley’s eyes as they watched forgiveness be bought and paid for with blood. The curl of Crowley’s mouth, barely visible but entirely genuine, even across a crowd, as they watched a miracle bloom onstage, for no reason other than to make each other happy.

The glow of neon reflected in Crowley’s sunglasses, passing destruction and trust together between them like a prayer: _don_ _’t leave me. I won’t._

Aziraphale pulls away, leaving Crowley gasping after him, but in the next minute they’re clutching at one another, faces tucked into each other’s necks, listening hard for each other’s heartbeats, for the proof of life between them.

 _Don_ _’t leave me._

 _I won_ _’t._

They breathe together for a moment. They wait for the horror to pass.

The morning light turns from dusky violet to pink and then soft orange before Aziraphale inhales sharply, shoring himself back up, and disentangles himself from Crowley. Their faces are both blotched; their hands are both trembling. He can feel that his smile is a weak, fragile thing, but he still smiles. Crowley needs to see him smile.

Aziraphale needs to see Crowley smile too. He reaches up, softly as he can, and rubs at the corner of Crowley’s mouth until he does. The intimacy of it almost undoes him, but the curl of Crowley’s lip keeps him on his feet.

They need showers. They need sleep. They need to feel one another soft and safe again, held in the comfort of clean skin and familiar sheets. Aziraphale knows this, but he can hardly bear to begin.

Finally, with a kiss to the pad of Aziraphale’s thumb, Crowley reaches out, and slides Aziraphale’s bow tie off.

It’s a slow, tender thing, undressing one another like this. Kisses passes between them like sighs, pressed to this curve here, that bone there. Each plane of exposed skin is a new vulnerability, a new exploration, inspection, _you_ _’re all right, I’m all right, we’re all right._ Crowley hangs Aziraphale’s waistcoat and folds his trousers; Aziraphale coils Crowley’s belt onto the bureau and hangs his neck chain on the hook inside the wardrobe. Collarbones, wrists; thighs, shins. They’re whole. They’re complete. They’re all right.

The white Oxford shirt Crowley had put on yesterday morning is the last thing to slip away from skin, helped by two sets of cautious hands. It’s soot-streaked and sweat-damp in places now, stained nearly beyond recognition, but it’s surprisingly difficult to pull it away from Crowley, to let go of the sight of him wrapped in Aziraphale’s cloth. To expose him, thin chest and soft stomach to the cool air.

When he hangs it, miraculously clean again, back into the wardrobe, it hangs as the only swath of white on Crowley’s side.

He’ll have to find something for himself, Aziraphale thinks idly, so he can feel Crowley close like this too, and he feels more than sees Crowley’s shaky smile behind him, as if he heard the thought. Just something small, maybe. Something to remind him.

They follow each other into the bathroom, all bare skin and exhausted bodies, and the spike of terror runs Aziraphale through again when Crowley reaches into the shower and turns the water on. He grabs for Crowley’s wrist, hauling him back away from the spray, _reckless, reckless_ —but Crowley only waits, patient as he ever is, until Aziraphale loosens his grip.

The water isn’t dangerous. They both know the water isn’t dangerous.

It’s hard to watch Crowley step under it anyway. _Don_ _’t leave me._

But Crowley’s fine, of course he’s fine, and Aziraphale follows after him, like he always does. The water feels good, actually, hot and relaxing, soothing. They wash each other with soft flannels and softer hands, scrubbing away at the soot-stained places as gently as an apology.

 _I_ _’m here. I’m with you._

When they’re clean again, Aziraphale turns Crowley around under the water, making sure he got every spot, and then backs him up against the tile and takes his cock in hand.

It’s a slow, meandering thing, all steady and predictable, solid hands on hips and foreheads pressed together, the both of them watching Crowley’s cock in Aziraphale’s hand. He hadn’t actually been hard, when Aziraphale had first touched him, but he had leaned into Aziraphale and send _yes, yes, yes_ down the line between them, and Aziraphale’s careful touches ease him into it, gentle and unhurried. The burn of arousal stays quiet between them, even as the tension builds in both their thighs, tightens in their stomachs: an ember, glowing alive in the dark.

It’s not about that anyway.

Crowley reaches too, after a moment, circling Aziraphale’s own half-hard cock; Aziraphale feels grounded at the feel of his palm, at the movement of his wrist. It’s about moving together, feeling together, knowing together. It’s about bodies that are _theirs_ and theirs alone, about feeling one good thing to override the last remnants pain and the fear and the despair.

This is about breathing together, about hanging on to one another as they guide each other over the edge, about letting go knowing _he_ _’s here, he’s with me._ This is about familiarity, about knowing how to twist a hand and where to kiss, even if other things have changed.

It’s about reclaiming, renewing, about _here-here-here-safe-safe-safe,_ and when Aziraphale finally comes into Crowley’s hand, trembling and shuddering and trying to focus on bringing Crowley to his own peak, it just feels like a profound relief.

Like all the love, love, love, love, love.

Afterward, long afterward, when the water starts to run cold and they clamber out of the shower with affronted, exhausted giggles, when they’ve toweled each other dry and crawled, one after the other into bed, Aziraphale looks at Crowley across the pillows intently, lips parting on an inhale as he prepares to say what’s been building in the base of his throat, what’s been echoing between them all morning. Offering his fear up to to reality; holding his terror up to the light.

“I almost lost you,” Aziraphale finally whispers.

“You didn’t,” Crowley whispers back. “You won’t.”

And there it is, really: the crumpling of the last of Aziraphale’s strength, the shattering of the end of his reserve. He folds himself across the sheets, into Crowley’s chest, gasping until he’s shaking; Crowley wraps himself around him, presses kisses and whispers into his hair, holds him close and keeps him in one piece, waiting for it to be over.

Because it will be over, and soon. Because this is a beginning, not an end.

The sun outside has risen, and Aziraphale hangs on.

*

Crowley opens his eyes.

The day has worn away into dusk again, draping the bedroom in the violet hush of dusk. He doesn’t really remember having fallen asleep, but the sheets are warm around him and the pillow obligingly soft, and he’s not surprised that he slept the whole day through.

Across the pillow, Aziraphale is awake already, tracing his fingertips into the curl of Crowley’s palm on the bed between them. There’s a cup of something steaming on the table behind him; he’s been up once already.

“Good morning,” he says softly.

Crowley looks up at the window above the headboard, at the sliver of blue dark peeking through the curtain, stretching out sleep-soft muscles before settling back in on his side, facing Aziraphale. “Good evening, I think you mean,” he answers.

Aziraphale hums. “Did you sleep well?’

“Out like a light. Did you? You clearly didn’t sleep as long as I thought you would.”

“Long enough. I never sleep as much as you do.”

Crowley huffs a laugh, fondness welling up inside him, pressing at his bones. “Liar. You don’t sleep as regularly, sure, but you can saw logs with the best of us.” He catches Aziraphale’s absent fingers with his own, making him look up. “Seriously, angel. Are you all right?”

Aziraphale smiles softly at him. “I’m all right. Tired and sore, but it’ll pass. How are you feeling, my dear?”

“Tired and sore sounds about right.”

Aziraphale doesn’t answer, stroking the back of Crowley’s thumb and sending threads of calm through the line between them. Crowley’s eyes drift closed again, and he’s thinking about letting himself shift back off into sleep when he feels Aziraphale let go of his hand and reach instead to cup his cheek. “Mm. Angel?”

“I didn’t see it last night,” Aziraphale says eventually, tracing over the skin on Crowley’s jaw, slow and gentle. “Awfully distracted, I suppose. And you were hiding, I think.”

Crowley remembers, all of a sudden, what he’d forgotten: the lion. _Aziraphale_ _’s_ lion.

He jerks away, the calm evaporating in a surge of anxiety. “Shit, sorry, I—“

“Don’t be,” Aziraphale says, following after him, sliding closer, nudging at Crowley’s jaw softly until Crowley gives in and turns his face into the pillow, lets Aziraphale see it properly. His lion, rampant on the plane of Crowley’s jaw, marked in black as though his ring had been a brand. “It’s me who should be sorry, I didn’t realise—it wasn’t my intention to trade your bindings from one place to another.”

Crowley holds himself very still under Aziraphale’s hand. “You didn’t mean to bind us together.”

“I didn’t mean to bind you at all,” Aziraphale corrects. “We’re already bound together in every way that counts. I don’t need to—I don’t need to _control_ you, to own you. You deserve to be your own. To be free.”

“S’fine, angel. Better you than anybody else.”

“Can you look at me, darling?”

Crowley doesn’t want to. He knows how Aziraphale will look already: understanding and compassionate, hatefully composed and maybe even a little self-sacrificing. But Crowley can’t deny him, and he shifts back anyway, settling on his side again so he can look at Aziraphale properly, daring to glance up at the furrow between his eyebrows, at the softness in his eyes, prepared to see pity writ large.

But he doesn’t look at Crowley the way Crowley expected at all.

He looks at Crowley like he loves him.

 _I want you, I need you. I can_ _’t do without you. I’m here._

“You’re not free,” Crowley points out, unsure what direction Aziraphale means this conversation to take. “You still belong to Heaven, at the end of the day.”

Aziraphale nods. “I do. And that’s all right for me, right now. I’d rather be the missing angel in the ranks, I think, than to erase myself from their ledger entirely. Not because I want to go back—“ he takes Crowley’s hand before he can draw it back in alarm— “but so other angels know that they can choose, that there are more ways than one to be an angel. But you shouldn’t make _your_ choice based on mine, darling. You need to make your choices for _you._ ”

Crowley raises his chin in challenge. “And are you giving me the choice?”

“I would _like_ to free you,” Aziraphale returns, “because you deserve to be free. But yes, it’s your choice. It will always be your choice.”

 _To be free._ Crowley doesn’t even know what that means. He looks at his hand in Aziraphale’s and tries to imagine what it would be like, to live without the demand of Heaven or Hell in his bones; without the call and response of Aziraphale’s heart in his heart. He imagines it would feel a lot like that one singular, terrifying moment of isolation he’d felt when Hell’s claim had snapped, before Aziraphale’s had taken its place. It had been disorienting, and confusing, like being tossed into the frigid sea without sight of land or a lifeline. Searching for a hand in the salt-water dark, praying you’ll find it before the storm surges and you’re lost beneath the waves.

Crowley looks at his hand in Aziraphale’s, and he’s not sure he’s all that strong a swimmer.

“I don’t want to be alone,” he finally admits.

“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale breathes. There’s so much love in his voice that it _hurts_ , it aches in Crowley’s ears, in his throat, in his elbows. Crowley glances up despite himself, and Aziraphale is so close, so stricken. “Crowley, you will _never_ have to be alone again.”

Then he kisses Crowley’s forehead, once, hard, and once on the mouth, hard there too, before squeezing Crowley’s hand one more time and shuffling himself out of the bed, stumbling for the bureau. Crowley sits up, confused, watching as he digs through his sock drawer, muttering to himself. “Angel?”

But Aziraphale is already on his way back, carrying something in his hand.

“I meant to do this next weekend actually,” Aziraphale says, climbing back onto the bed without bothering to get under the covers. “After the ballet. Was going to take you on a nice little walk down by the river and do this properly, with the city all lit up—at any rate, it seems rather superfluous at this point, but I think I’d better do it now.”

And he passes Crowley a little blue velvet box, the top already opened unceremoniously. Inside is a ring.

Crowley stares at it.

And stares at it.

And starts to laugh.

He laughs until he can’t breathe anymore, relief washing through him like a wave, and of course he’s being ridiculous. He doesn’t have to worry about being lost at sea anymore, does he?

Aziraphale has already guided him home. He’s the sun on the horizon and the lighthouse on the shore, the lifeboat in the waves and the rock in the storm. He’s the wing over Crowley’s head against the rain; he’s the hand reaching out on the tarmac, sword raised against Heaven and Hell and anybody else with something to say about it. He’s a cup of cocoa on a wintry day and a glass of iced water on a summery one, walks over the Downs and takeout on the kitchen floor, the pain in Crowley’s arse when he’s stuck in the mud about something and the absolute endless love of Crowley’s life.

He’s the love, all the love, all the love, love, love, love, love.

Crowley knows what he has to do. He’s been waiting to do it for weeks, too unsure of himself, of their future, but there’s no uncertainty left in him now. He rolls over in the bed, digging into his bedside table, shoving aside old magazines and socks and bottles of this and that, things he’d shoved in there just so he could bury something at the bottom. Something he’d bought several weeks ago on what he’d like to call a whim: a human impulse that’s been burrowed into Crowley’s heart for centuries.

Something little, and blue, and velvet.

“The ballet next weekend,” Crowley says, popping the lid and looking over the golden band inside once more. “Was going to take you to brunch the next morning and pop down to St James’s afterward, for old times’ sake. Have a walk around the duck pond and find ourselves a private spot, you know? S’pose I don’t have to worry about whether you’ll say yes anymore.”

He hands the box over into Aziraphale’s hands, blushing a bit at the stunned little _oh_ that’s formed on Aziraphale’s wide-eyed face, and looks back at his own box. The ring inside is a dark, brushed metal with a thin line of gold around the middle if that’s a _heart of gold_ commentary, he’ll never let Aziraphale live it down. The idea makes him almost giddy.

Aziraphale breathes in, sharp, and wriggles the ring out of its box. “Yes,” he says, quick and earnest, sliding it onto his fourth finger and holding his hand up to see it. “In case you were wondering. Bit of a formality at this point, but the answer is yes. It would always have been yes.”

Crowley laughs, and pulls his own ring out, slipping it on and holding their hands up together, lining them up in the moonlight. His longer, Aziraphale’s broader. His rougher, a bit, and Aziraphale’s softer. A gold band and a black one. Six thousand years of reaching out to one another, finally now realising they’ve both been hanging on this whole time.

“For the record,” he says, absolutely not emotional at all, “it’s a yes from me too.”

Aziraphale kisses him.

This is a familiar kiss too: a kiss with a laugh at the edges of it, a kiss that pulls at the edges of their mouths until they’re smiling too hard to be doing anything more than really just nuzzling at each other. Aziraphale’s warm against him, with those soft, gentle hands, that hot, curious mouth. Their rings _click_ against each other when their hands find each other in the sheets.

What would it be, Crowley thinks, if freedom were less about being untethered, unanchored, and more about setting sail? Casting off in a new direction and seeing what’s beyond that distant horizon?

He doesn’t have to decide right now, today, this week, this month, this year. He could wear this lion until he’s ready to be something else all over again. Until they’ve both almost forgotten it wasn’t always there.

But this is a beginning, and Crowley’s ready to start.

The line between them is brilliant with love, with joy, with _here-here-here-safe-safe-safe_. He can feel Aziraphale’s happiness, his peace of mind, his sense of home. His memory of _we_ _’re on our own side_ , tempered with flashes of Anathema’s laugh and Newt’s smile, with Tracey’s no-nonsense passing out of tea and Shadwell’s oblivious loyalties.

 _We_ _’re on our own side, but we’re not alone._

He settles back into the pillows, eyes closed and face tilted so Aziraphale can see the mark, and says, “All right. Do it.”

Aziraphale doesn’t need to ask what he means. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

There are warm fingertips on his face again, tracing over the lion one last time, and then Aziraphale simply leans in and blows a cool, steady breath over it.

Crowley feels the binding break like something coming unlatched, soft and smooth. The line between their chests burns bright one last time before it fades, leaving Crowley’s heart aching but in an ancient, beautiful way, like there’s something too big under his breastbone, something he knows he’ll spend the rest of his life making sure it reaches out of him with both hands. It’s his and his alone, but it’s also Aziraphale’s, and Anathema’s, Newt’s and Tracey’s and Shadwell’s, the Them’s and the Bentley’s and the baker’s on the high street, the apple tree seeds’ he’s been waiting to plant, the way the moonlight streams in over their bed, the way music thrums in his veins, the way a plant unfurls a new leaf.

It’s all the love, love, love, love, love.

“What’s it look like?” he finally croaks, when he can find his voice again.

Aziraphale makes a considering sound. “It’s sort of—shimmering. I think it’s waiting for you to decide.”

 _I_ _’m the Serpent_ , Crowley thinks. _And the Lion. The angel and the demon. I_ _’m all the questions and all the answers, all the daring and all the possibilities. I’m the garden and the ocean, the shadow and the starlight, and all the spaces in between. I’m fast but I can go slow and I’m temptation but I can be a blessing and I’ll always let you choose. I’m occult but I’m also human, deep down. I’d rather be kind than good and I’d rather ask questions than stand blind. I_ _can decide who I want to be instead of who they think I ought to be. I can stand on my own, wholly myself, and I can stand as a part of him, part of them, the family I chose._

 _I can love Her creation maybe not the way it was made to be loved, but the way it_ deserves _to be, and him most of all._

 _I_ _’m free._

*

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr @[forineffablereasons](http://www.forineffablereasons.tumblr.com)!


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